Diversity of plant species on farms in the Camaguey municipality

Context: The conservation of biodiversity integrated with agricultural practices can bring enormous social, economic and ecological benefits, therefore, practices that conserve and use sustainably and increase biodiversity are necessary in agricultural systems to ensure food production , the quality of life and the health of ecosystems. Objective: To quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the diversity of plant species as an element of the functioning of agroecosystems. Methods: The fields of the farms are sampled, recording the species present in an area of 0.24 hectares. For this, the fields of the farms are subdivided into 6 transects, 80 m x 5 m, each of them divided into 16 plots of 5 x 5 m. The diversity indices Alpha (Margalef diversity index, Pielou uniformity index, Shannon-Wiener index) and Beta (Jaccard) are calculated and the Agrobiodiversity Index of agroecosystems is used. Results: The Alpha Diversity indices showed a trend towards values of diversity between medium and high, and low dominance, while the Jaccard index indicates the existence of fairly similar farms in terms of herbaceous-arboreal species and different floristically in the species arboreal. Unsustainability is evident in the management and handling of Agrobiodiversity. Conclusions: The farms were floristically dissimilar for arboreal plants and moderately dissimilar for herbaceous plants, while the Agricultural Diversity Index evidenced the application of unsustainable management practices in agroecosystems, where the application of agroecological principles and a Management aimed at obtaining profit rather than caring for the agroecosystem, consequently the production and management model of the actors are ecologically unsustainable.