DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2018.v06i07.010

Pages: 537-542

Agriculture is one of the most important components of our society and plays a great role for the advancement of human life. This research is aimed to assess the concentration of heavy metals accumulation and soil arthropods diversity in two different agricultural farms such as organic and conventional farms. Totally four heavy metals (Cr, Fe, Mn and Al) were detected in organic farm soil in the concentration of 12.66±4.18, 58.42±8.7, 1.23±0.72 and 22.46±1.98 while eight metals (Cu-81.95±13.65, Zn-63.67±27.57, Cr- 159.87±27, Fe-9680.57±732.032, Ni- 121.43±50.58, Mn-2.15±0.62, Al- 124.79±27.06 and Mo-126.49±51.48) were detected in conventional farm soil. Four metals detected additionally in conventional farm soil. Besides, this study also investigates the soil arthropods diversity in both farms. The soil arthropods diversity in the organic farm was high when compared to the conventional farm. Totally, 8983 soil arthropods belonging to twenty-seven families were observed among these 4969 (53.32%) individuals from the organic farm and 4014 (44.68%) from the conventional farm. In both farms, the higher number of arthropod was found in the month of November (1016, 807) and low in the month of September (423, 318). In this study, the concentrations of heavy metals detected in conventional farm were significantly high and it may one of the reasons for decline the soil arthropods diversity. This heavy metals concentrations and diversity fluctuations between these two farms may be due to the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural farms for better crop yields.