Question

How do biotic and abiotic factors adversely affect crop production?

Answer 1

Hint: Biotic factors refer to the living components whereas abiotic factor refers to the non-living components and their interaction in the environment forms the ecosystem.

Complete answer:
The presence of the biotic and abiotic factors in the environment is necessary to keep check on all the processes. Every component has a specific and important role to play in the environment and thus considered to be important.
The living components like insects, pests and diseases result in damaging the crops and thus affect its production. Pests feed on the crop by either ingesting the leaves of the plant and then subsequently eats up all the plant thus affecting its production, weeds affect the production of the crops by competing for the resources like nutrients, light, water, fertilizers etc. with the main crop and thus results in its low production. The biotic and abiotic components of the ecosystem are interlinked with each other and their activities also depend on each other.
Abiotic factors like rainfall, sunlight, temperature and wind etc. affects the crop production. For example: Any natural disaster like drought or flood may affect the crop production either due to extreme temperature conditions or due to excess water flow to the crops. Excess of heat, over irrigation of the crops, excess sunlight and higher wind velocity will damage the crops whereas scarcity of the water will thus lead to lower supply of minerals and essential nutrients to the plants which are to be uptake from the soil, low heat and sunlight will affect the ripening process and thus harvesting of the crops and thus these factors altogether can contribute in the decreased production of the crops.

Note: Biotic and abiotic factors go hand in hand. If one of them is changed the effect can be easily seen on another one and their impact should be studied carefully.