Women engaged in accumulating the silk cocoons from the Chandrike, the bamboo tray mountage at Arekatte Doddi close to Sathnur, Kanakapura Tauk in Ramanagara District.
| Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH Ok / THE HINDU
Though India is the world’s main shopper of silk, manufacturing of the lustrous and shiny fibre spun out of silkworms has persistently fallen wanting the rising demand within the nation.
But, statistics obtainable from the Central Silk Board (CSB) present that raw silk production in India has recorded a big improve over the past 10 years – up from 23,678 metric tonnes throughout 2012-13 to 36,582 metric tonnes throughout 2022-23.
Reasons for surge in manufacturing of silk
Scientists at Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute (CSRTI) in Mysuru, which is pioneering research in tropical sericulture, identified that India has managed to extend uncooked silk output by nearly 13,000 metric tonnes over the past decade, bringing down its reliability on imports from China, on account of two primary causes – excessive yielding number of mulberry vegetation and superior high quality bivoltine cocoon breeds.
While the primary purpose was the adoption of excessive yielding number of mulberry vegetation, whose leaves are the only real meals for mulberry silkworms, the second purpose is the substantial shift from rearing inferior high quality multivoltine cocoons to the manufacturing of bivoltine cocoons, a hybrid selection that’s excessive yielding and superior in high quality.
CSRTI scientists, together with its Director Dr. Gandhi Doss and Dr. M.Ok. Raghunath, recalled that native types of mulberry vegetation have been yielding not more than 18 metric tonnes per hectare per yr. After persistent research aimed toward creating high-yielding mulberry varieties, a serious breakthrough in leaf productiveness and high quality was achieved in 1997 when the institute got here out with a brand new mulberry selection Victory -1 (VI). This selection has a yield potential of 60 metric tonnes per hectare per yr. It has revolutionised silk productiveness by masking as much as 90% of mulberry gardens in southern Indian states over the past 25 years, the scientists identified.
Government cocoon market in Ramanagara.
| Photo Credit:
M A Sriram
Area below cultivation
The complete space below mulberry plantations throughout India was 2.53 lakh hectares throughout 2022-23, up from 2.24 lakh hectares throughout 2017-18. Farmers have progressively uprooted the low-yielding mulberry selection and changed them with the high-yielding selection VI.
The second main purpose for the spike in raw silk production is the rise within the rearing of superior high quality bivoltine cocoons appropriate to India’s temperate local weather.
Much of the uncooked silk produced in India comes from the yellowish-coloured multivoltine cocoons whereas the high-quality silk used to fabricate the sought-after Indian sarees was woven out of bivoltine silk imported from China.
India sought assist from Japan
Government of India had requested the federal government of Japan to offer technical help for bivoltine silk manufacturing within the nineties, paving the way in which for begin of a Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) challenge for promotion and popularizing of bivoltine technology in India.
Bivoltine silk manufacturing elevated from 2,559 metric tonnes in 2012-13 to five,874 metric tonnes in 2017-18 earlier than recording 8,904 metric tonnes in 2022-23.
| Photo Credit:
M A Sriram
Over the final twenty years, personnel from the CSRTI together with officers from the Department of Sericulture have been engaged in disseminating the applied sciences developed within the laboratory, resulting in elevated manufacturing of bivoltine cocoons by the farmers.
Bivoltine silk manufacturing elevated from 2,559 metric tonnes in 2012-13 to five,874 metric tonnes in 2017-18 earlier than recording 8,904 metric tonnes in 2022-23. Though multivoltine silk nonetheless accounted for 27,654 metric tonnes in 2022-23, the quantum improve in bivoltine silk manufacturing is not going to solely assist meet the nation’s demand for superior high quality silk required for manufacture of sarees and clothes, it’ll additionally carry down India’s dependence on silk imported from China.
To additional boost silk manufacturing, CSRTI is wanting ahead to launch of disease-resistant and temperature tolerant breeds, that are nonetheless within the pipeline.
| Photo Credit:
M A Sriram
Improved breed
With bivoltine cocoons, a reeler wants solely 6 kg of cocoons to provide one kg of uncooked silk towards the 13 to fifteen kg of cocoons that have been required earlier.
“This is possible due to the improved silkworm breed, mulberry variety and rearing technologies,” stated CSRTI scientist Dr. Ok. B. Chandrashekar. Also, the person cocoon filament size has elevated from 600-800 metres to 1,000 to 1,200 metres, thereby decreasing the price of manufacturing of silk cloth.
Apart from high-yielding number of mulberry plant and manufacturing of superior high quality bivoltine cocoons, the opposite interventions by CSRTI that helped boost raw silk production in India embody the shift from leaf feeding to shoot feeding, moreover pest management measures and use of disinfectants.
“Earlier, mulberry leaves were plucked and fed to the silkworms. Now, the entire shoot of mulberry is fed, thereby saving labour and time,” identified CSRTI scientist Dr. Bala Saraswathi S.
What is in pipeline
To additional boost silk manufacturing, CSRTI is wanting ahead to launch of disease-resistant and temperature tolerant breeds, that are nonetheless within the pipeline. The optimum temperature required within the rearing home for a silkworm to present its most output is anyplace between 24 to 26 diploma centigrade.
“The new breeds will tolerate plus or minus two degrees, and offer better survival rate,” stated Dr. Chandrashekar.
CSRTI-Mysuru has been pursuing research aimed toward enhancing manufacturing and productiveness of silk in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Kerala, moreover Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, by its extension community comprising Regional Sericulture Research Stations and Research Extension Centres. The institute has additionally imparted coaching to greater than 53,000 individuals, together with farmers and 800 overseas nationals, in numerous facets of sericulture technology, stated Dr. Gandhi Doss.
