High capacity silkworm egg storage plant opened

The facility can store upto a crore disease free eggs

The Central Silk Board at Vidyaranyapuram here on Monday got a high capacity state-of-the-art cold storage plant for silkworm eggs. The improved facility has the capacity to store up to one crore disease free layings (DFLs) or silk worm eggs against 30 lakh eggs earlier.

Giving an overview of the facility, Scientist-D, Silk Worm Preservation Centre, Central Silk Board, Dr Shankar said that this was a first its kind plant in the country, and also at the global level. The eggs stored here include basic and commercial stocks of different types, including bivoltine silkworm seeds, with the minimum storage period of four months to 10 months in three levels - storing, incubation and supply.

Shankar said, the intention behind the upgradation of the existing facility that started two years ago, was to enable uninterrupted supply of basic and commercial silkworm seeds, in keeping with the demand. The plant is run on a DX system built with pre-fabricated double skinned insulated panels. It also equipped with PLC based data logger system for automatic monitoring of temperature and humidity inside the cold rooms with alarms. The control panel boards run on microprocessor, connected with data logger.

The stock for the day (Monday) was 62,33,541 eggs, which can be increased up to 1 to 1.5 crore, if used to its fullest capacity, said Shankar.

The National Silkworm Seed Organisation (NSSO), the mulberry silkworm seed production and the management arm of Central Silk Board is currently operating the cold storage plants set up at Mysuru, Hosur and Dehradun.