Research Article DeterminantFactorofPlantSpeciesDiversityintheOrganic Agriculture-DominatedSystemofGedeoZone,SouthernEthiopia AbiyotMebrate , 1 TadesseKippie, 1 andNigussieZeray 2 1 Department of Natural Resource Management, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dilla University, Dilla, Ethiopia 2 Departments of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dilla University, Dilla, Ethiopia Correspondence should be addressed to Abiyot Mebrate; abiyotgeno@gmail.com Received 12 April 2021; Revised 22 September 2021; Accepted 20 October 2021; Published 29 October 2021 Academic Editor: Xunfeng Chen Copyright © 2021 Abiyot Mebrate et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Agricultural intensification is a major challenge for biodiversity conservation in many parts of the world. Organic agriculture is perceived as a possible solution for biodiversity conservation in agriculture dominant systems. is study aimed at investigating the current status of plant species diversity and its determinants in organic agriculture-dominated areas of Gedeo zone, Southern Ethiopia. Multistage sampling procedures were used to obtain 108 households from three agroecological zones of the study area, andplantspeciesdatawerecollectedfromthequadrantslaidinfarmsofsampledfarmers.Besides,diversitymanagementpractice data were collected using focus group discussion. A total of 234 plant species belonging to 82 plant families were identified. Most (69.2%) of species in the system were native. e mean value of richness and Shannon index evenness for the whole system was 10.36, 2.06, and 0.89 for highland midland and lowland agroecological zones, respectively, which is relatively high compared with other agriculture-dominated systems in the tropics. e diversity of overall plant species were significantly affected by both agroecological zones and the wealth status of farmers. Midland and lowland agroecological zones had the highest richness values for total plant species than highland. Similarly, highest richness was recorded among farmers of rich and medium wealth classes than poor. e diversity of tree species was significantly affected by both agroecological zone and wealth status of farmer households. e lowland agroecological zone had a significantly higher number of tree species than midland and lowland agroecological zones, while the rich farmer had higher tree diversity compared to medium and poor farmers. e study also identified that diversity of shrubs were significantly influenced by agroecological zone. e midland agroecological had a significantlyhighernumberofshrubsdiversitycomparedtolowlandandhighlandagroecologicalzones.Inthisstudy,herbaceous species diversity was not influenced by both agroecological zone and farmer wealth class. e function of plant species and indigenous plant species maintenance practice had its own effect on plant species diversity in the study area, since the area is dominatedwithorganicagriculture.erefore,tomaintainthecurrentstatusofthesystemandtoimprovethefarmer’slivelihood, development planners may need to design agroecological-based plant species conservation strategies that give due consideration for indigenous plant species conservation practices and function of plant species. 1.Introduction Biodiversity is an important symbol to measure the envi- ronmental quality and degree of ecological civilization [1]. It is central to ecosystem function and the provision of eco- system services [2, 3] and a critical resource that humanity simply cannot afford to destroy [4]. Despite the moral, cultural and economic reasons for conserving biodiversity and its ecosystem services, biodiversity is being lost and degraded at an unprecedented rate as a result of human activities [5]. Land-use change, farm management practices [6], and intensification are assumed to be the major drivers of the current biodiversity loss [7]. Plants are among the organisms more strongly influenced by agricultural man- agement practices [8]. Up to 1 million species threatened with extinction, many within decades, and 25% of species threatened with extinction across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant groups that have Hindawi International Journal of Ecology Volume 2021, Article ID 2919260, 12 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/2919260