Question

Insect/ disease damage to crop is significantly higher in monoculture than in mixed crops

Answer 1

This is completely true. Monoculture of crops is more prone to any insect or pest damage than mixed crops.

This is because ---

In monoculture, only a single type of crop is grown and cultivated in the particular field. A specific type of insect or pest or any disease spread by them attacks the single type of crop in the field. So in this case, when any one crop or plant gets affected by the insect or disease then correspondingly all other crops in that field are rapidly infected and damaged because all are of same type. Therefore the whole cultivation gets damaged.

On the other hand, in the cultivation of mixed crops, a lot of different varieties of crops are grown together in the same field. When a particular insect or disease affects a type of plant or crop then that disease or infection is spread only to the crops of that same type. The other varieties of crop are not affected and they remain healthy. So in the end, the total cultivation is not damaged. Only a part of it is damaged. The rest remains good.

Also, when the crops are grown alternatively then the spread of diseases is also much slower. So there is time for the cultivator to get rid of the pests and protect the crop from further damage.

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Answer 2

Answer:

Mixed species cropping is often perceived as a viable tool to increase on-farm biodiversity in organic agriculture and is a potentially important component of any sustainable cropping system. Apart from increasing total farm productivity, mixed species cropping can bring many important benefits such as improvement of soil fertility management and suppression of pests and/or diseases. In this sense it can be seen as performing different eco-services in the farm system. This paper discusses mixed cropping in this context while focusing on its potential and actual use as a tool to manage pests and diseases in organic farming systems.