[Entomofauna associated to horticultural crops under organic and conventional practices in Córdoba, Argentina]

Farming practices and the addition of chemical synthetic substances in conventional agroecosystems are detrimental mainly to natural enemies of phytophagous insects, diminishing the natural regulation of pest insects. On the other hand, in organic agriculture, biological processes and care of the environment are favoured, hence an increase in insect biodiversity is predicted in this type of systems. In this work, abundance, richness of insects and proportion of functional groups were compared through a single quantitative sampling of insects in horticultural crop fields, three under organic and three under conventional management practices. Insect species richness, total and for guilds (phytophagous and entomophagous insects) were significantly higher in organic orchards, and also was the abundance of entomophagous insects. Richness and abundance of all insect orders (with exception of Homoptera abundance), were higher in orchards under organic management, being significative the differences for richness of Coleoptera and richness and abundance of Hymenoptera. Similar tendencies were observed in data obtained through sweep net in weeds. These results suggest that organic practices increase the diversity of species, particularly that of natural enemies.