Study of arthropod communities as natural enemies and pests in organic and non-organic rice cultivation

Abstract Organic rice farming has been widely adopted. The study aims to analyze the arthropod communities and their roles in organic and non-organic rice. The study was conducted in Subang Regency, West Java, Indonesia, from 2016 to 2017. The methods used to observe arthropod populations were visual counting on rice. Arthropod diversity was analyzed using the Shannon index, the evenness using Pielou. The most abundant predator population found in organic and non-organic rice was spiders. The population of Cyrtorhinus, Paederus and Coccinela were relatively low in organic and non-organic rice. The arthropods that dominated organic and non-organic rice plantations in the dry season were Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Diptera, and Hymenoptera. Rice pests were brown planthoppers, whiteback leafhoppers, and rice stem borers. The arthropods’ diversity in organic and non-organic rice plantations in the dry season was in the low category based on the calculation of the Shannon index, which had the highest value of 1.8. The Arthropods in organic and non-organic rice included Hemiptera, Coleoptera, Collembola, and Araneidae, with 32 species. The dominant insect pests were brown planthoppers, whiteback leafhoppers, and rice stem borers.