ONE of the ecological tenets justifying conservation of biodiversity is that diversity begets stability. Impacts of biodiversity on population dynamics and ecosystem functioning have long been debated1-7, however, with many theoretical explorations2-6,8-11 but few field studies12-15. Here we describe a long-term study of grasslands16,17 which shows that primary productivity in more diverse plant communities is more resistant to, and recovers more fully from, a major drought. The curvilinear relationship we observe suggests that each additional species lost from our grasslands had a progressively greater impact on drought resistance. Our results support the diversity-stability hypothesis5,6,18,19, but not the alternative hypothesis that most species are functionally redundant19-21. This study implies that the preservation of biodiversity is essential for the maintenance of stable productivity in ecosystems.