City to soon host silkworm seed preservation centre

Will boast of state-of--the-art technology

M Sathiyavathy, member secretary, Central Silk Board laid the foundation for the new facility here on Thursday.

The centre is a nodal unit of National Silkworm Seed Organisation (NSSO) and has been in existence for the past 30 years. It will now be expanded to accommodate additional up to 50 lakh DFLs. The cold storage facility is being expanded at a cost of Rs 3.1 crore.

It would have a high capacity structure with state-of-the-art technology. Sericulturists from across the country can benefit from the services rendered in the centre, Sathiyavathi said at the foundation laying ceremony.  The new centre helps scientific method of preservation and maintenance of silkworm bivoltine parental stock races and elite CSR hybrids under different hibernation schedules.

Objective

The objective of the centre would be to ensure systematic method of intermediate care followed by optimum incubation and black boxing at right embryonic stage to get uniform hatching on expected day.  It would support the timely release and supply of P3, P2 and P1 basic seed farms, government silk farms, adopted seed rearers, quality sericulture clubs and departments of sericulture across India.

Supply of incubated eggs

The centre would undertake supply of incubated silkworm eggs under various programmes like cluster promotion programme, institute village linkage programme, franchise chawki rearing centres, department of sericulture and other approved agencies.
In her address, Sathiyavathy said the work on the new state-of-the-art centre would be completed in shortest possible time. The unit will be operational by April next year, the member secretary said.

‘Rakshak’

On the occasion, she released Rakshak, a new bed disinfectant effective against different silkworm diseases. The new disinfectant has been formulated and developed through a joint collaboration between Silkworm Seed Technology Laboratory, Kodathi and Sri Durga Biotech, Bangalore. R N Singh and Shantha - the scientists who worked on the new disinfectant were felicitated.  S M H Qadri, Director of Central Sericulture Research and Training Institute (CSRTI), V N Kamat of Sri Durba Biotech, B A Parthasarathy, scientist, National Silkworm Seed Organisation were present.