Soil arthropods diversity in agricultural and horticultural ecosystem of mid hills of Meghalaya

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at ICAR-NEH, NBPGR research farm and experimental farm of the College of Post-Graduate Studies in Agricultural Sciences (CPGS-AS), CAU, Meghalaya with a view to determine the Soil arthropods diversity in Agricultural and Horticultural ecosystem of mid hills of Meghalaya. The results revealed that the Agricultural ecosystem recorded higher soil arthropods population of 1987 individuals as compared to Horticultural ecosystem with 1500 individuals. It was also recorded that Soil arthropods belonging to 5 different Classes under 31 Families and 37 Genus constituted the fauna of the arthropods whereby Class Entognatha recorded the highest number of individuals. The highest number of individuals recorded under Macro and Micro arthropods was Order Araneae and Order Entomobryomorpha respectively.