author(s)
RS Pan, Pradip Kumar Sarkar, Reshma Shinde, Moanaro, Rakesh Kumar, JS Mishra, AK Singh and BP Bhatt

abstract
An experiment was conducted to study the effect of diversified cropping system on insect and weed pest diversity without compromising the yield of target crop. The result revealed that, there was significantly higher grain yield in case of Finger millet (3.72 t ha^-1) followed by Finger millet+Black gram (3.11 t ha^-1) and Finger millet+Horse gram (3.11 t ha^-1. It also clearly showed that there was relatively higher Shannon's diversity Index value of insect pest in the diversified cropping system of Rice+blackgram (0.62) when compared to monocropping system, but the Shannon's index value of weeds was found to be comparatively and significantly higher in sole crops (i.e., having highest value of 0.99 in Horse gram cropping system), compared to diversified systems viz., Finger millet+Horse gram (0.73) and Finger millet+Black gram (0.74). In crop diversification systems, infestation of leaf folder, Anticarsia irrorata was observed in black gram and horse gram in all the sole and integrated plots. Whereas, the species Cnaphalocrocis medinalis was recorded maximum in the case of rice, black gram and Finger millet+black gram cropping systems. The insect pest, Maruca testulalis infestation was observed only in black gram cropping system with maximum damage of pods during its development stage that resulted in reduction of crop yield. Hence, it was cleared that the diversified cropping systems like Finger millet+Black gram and Finger millet+Horse gram were found to be the best cropping systems for controlling insect and weed pest diversity, naturally without compromising the yield of target crop. Among the sole crops, Finger millet cropping systems was found to be the best compared to others in achieving maximum crop yield with low insect pest and weed infestation.