Design and evaluation of eco-friendly mountages for the silkworm, Bombyx mori L.

Abstract

The silkworm Bombyx mori L. ends its larval stage with construction of silken armour called ‘cocoon’. The management of spinning larvae demands much care to maximize profit to the farmer, which necessitates manual picking of the ripened worms and provide proper anchorage to construct cocoons and the process is called as mounting. More than 40 % of the labour force is dedicated towards mounting (15 out of total 35 mandays/100 DFLs) that draws attention of the researchers striving hard to double farmer’s income by designing self mounting cocooning structures. Though corrugated plastic mountages are available, they are suitable only for Bivoltine (BV) silkworms that have a notable crawling habit. Ourefforts to design and develop new ecofriendly self mounting structures for mounting both crossbreeds (CB) and BV silkwormsevolved four new type of mountages viz., Spiral, Zig-zag, Square mountages made of bamboo and the Ribbon mountage. The lab tests of these mountages in comparison with the regular bamboo mountage and the plastic self mounting structures clearly indicated that the spiral mountages are comparable with the regular bamboo mountage with respect to various cocoon and reeling parameters among both CB (PM X CSR2) and BV double Hybrid (FC1 X FC2). Also these are self mounting cocooning frames that reduce the cost on labour during ripe worm management.

Evaluation of Self-mounting Spiral Mountage on Cocooning of Silkworm, Bombyx mori

“…Similar results were reported from Vinoda et al (2021) where they reported that higher number of larvae from selfmounting spiral mountage when compared to plastic collapsible mountage among self-mounting structures. The intricately woven bamboo spiral mountage might have provided better anchorage for the silkworm to crawl when compared to plastic collapsible mountage allowing a greater number of larvae on the self-spiral mountage.…”