Comparative Analysis on the Invertebrate Biodiversity between Organic and Conventional Agriculture Fields

Although some skeptical views arguing that the impact of organic farming is quite limited to sustainable biodiversity, the organic agriculture has been generally accepted to have positive effects on various properties of soils not only on biophysical and ecological properties but also on biodiversity of the field. Therefore, this field investigation has been conducted to examine the effect of organic farming, relative to conventional agriculture, through a comparative investigations of the two systems for conserving local biodiversity of invertebrate animals. For this research, organic and conventional farming locations matched with both of a paddy field and a upland fields in Goesan-gun province (Chungcheongbuk-do, South Korea) were selected to compare the species richness of invertebrate biodiversity as follows: location OP (Organic Paddy field), location OU (Organic Upland field), location CP (Conventional Paddy field), and location CU (Conventional Upland field). Among 249 species collected, the numbers of species collected in the locations practicing organic farming were greater than the locations practicing conventional farming both in paddy fields (104 vs. 84 species) and upland fields (108 vs. 77 species). Changes in species richness can be shown in the selected locations depending on the agriculture system with organic (50 species) or conventional (44 species) farming systems in the paddy fields, similarly with organic (42 species) or conventional (35 species) farming in the upland fields, respectively. Our present research clearly shows that a wide range of taxa, including insects, spiders and other invertebrates, benefit from organic management through increases in abun-dance or species richness. It has been also identified that four orders (Hemiptera, Diptera, Hynemoptera, and Araneae) that are largely intrinsic to organic paddy field, and another three orders (Hemiptera, Coleoptera, and Araneae) that are particularly beneficial for organic crop field regime.