How research and advanced technology helped India boost raw silk production Premium

Central Silk Board (CSB) statistics reveal that raw silk production in India has recorded a significant increase during the last 10 years – up from 23,678 metric tonnes during 2012-13 to 36,582 metric tonnes during 2022-23.

Though India is the world’s leading consumer of silk, production of the lustrous and shiny fibre spun out of silkworms has consistently fallen short of the growing demand in the country.

But, statistics available from the Central Silk Board (CSB) show that raw silk production in India has recorded a significant increase during the last 10 years – up from 23,678 metric tonnes during 2012-13 to 36,582 metric tonnes during 2022-23.

Scientists at Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute (CSRTI) in Mysuru, which is pioneering research in tropical sericulture, pointed out that India has managed to increase raw silk output by almost 13,000 metric tonnes during the last decade, bringing down its reliability on imports from China, on account of two main reasons – high yielding variety of mulberry plants and superior quality bivoltine cocoon breeds.

While the first reason was the adoption of high yielding variety of mulberry plants, whose leaves are the sole food for mulberry silkworms, the second reason is the substantial shift from rearing inferior quality multivoltine cocoons to the production of bivoltine cocoons, a hybrid variety that is high yielding and superior in quality.

CSRTI scientists, including its Director Dr. Gandhi Doss and Dr. M.K. Raghunath, recalled that local varieties of mulberry plants were yielding no more than 18 metric tonnes per hectare per year. After persistent research aimed at developing high-yielding mulberry varieties, a major breakthrough in leaf productivity and quality was achieved in 1997 when the institute came out with a new mulberry variety Victory -1 (VI). This variety has a yield potential of 60 metric tonnes per hectare per year. It has revolutionised silk productivity by covering up to 90% of mulberry gardens in southern Indian states over the last 25 years, the scientists pointed out.

The total area under mulberry plantations across India was 2.53 lakh hectares during 2022-23, up from 2.24 lakh hectares during 2017-18. Farmers have progressively uprooted the low-yielding mulberry variety and replaced them with the high-yielding variety VI.

The second major reason for the spike in raw silk production is the increase in the rearing of superior quality bivoltine cocoons suitable to India’s temperate climate.