Sericulture Biotechnology,Sericulture Industry,Multivoltine,Bivotine,Molecular Genetics,Silk Worms,Mulberry

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Your Ad Here	Sericulture Biotechnology Sericulture biotechnology, particularly in India, has assumed significance in recent years, because it provides employment to rural landless and allows utilization of waste and drylands, where nothing can be grown. In these waste and drylands, mulberry can be grown for silk industry giving handsome money to the poor marginal farmers. Mulberry and silkworm constitute the basic material for silk production, so that any biotechnology approach should consider improvement of silkworm as well as mulberry.
Sericulture is an important industry in India. In the year 1993-94, 13,418 million tonnes of mulberry silk was produced in India, which is the second largest silk producing country in the world. However, despite significant progress in sericulture at the global level, Indian sericulture industry is primitive and is not in a position to produce high quality silk in large quantity. In India, mainly multivoltine and bivoltine breeds are being produced. However, due to poor surivivability of these improved strains and a variety of diseases, these improved strains are not very popular. Other discouraging factors include low precipitation, scanty ground water and poor .cultivation practices.
Considerable research at the Central Sericulture Research and Training Institute, (CSRTI), Mysore, is directed towards (i) the improvement of existing mulberry varieties; (ii) introduction of improved mulberry varieties and productive silkworm breeds and (iii) development of silkworm management under tropical conditions. Studies for the production of transgenic silkworm has also been initiated, along with other molecular genetic studies under a collaborative project entitled Molecular Genetics of Silk Worms: Fundamental Studies and Application to Sericulture.
The project was sanctioned by European Commission and has the following collaborators: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India), Lyon (France), Leuven (Belgium) and Milan (Italy). During 1990-95, the Department of Biotechnology (Govt. of India) and Central Silk Board (Bangalore) had joint discussions to analyse the constraints of the industry. They also identified need based priorities in sericulture research and prepared a number of projects to be jointly funded by these two agencies.