Development of Fine Denier Silkworm Hybrid of Bombyx mori L. for Superior Quality Silk

Serious attempt for the improvement of quality parameters in silkworm hybrids came rather very late in India. Realising the need for productive breeds to the field and reorientation in breeding methodology, the silkworm breeders of CSRTI, Mysore were able to develop silkworm breeds with fine denier namely, JPN7, CSR48, B63 and B65 of specific industrial requirement through directional selection. As the success of silkworm breeds mainly depends on their combining ability, the developed breeds were subjected for hybrid evaluation. Out of 42 bivoltine hybrids studied, one hybrid, $CSR48{\times}CSR5$ was identified for its superiority over the existing bivoltine hybrids namely $CSR2{\times}CSR4,\;CSR2{\times}CSR5\;and\;CSR18{\times}CSR19$ for majority of qualitative traits. Post cocoon testing of large quantity of cocoons of $CSR48{\times}CSR5$ resulted in the production of high quality '3A'grade silk. It is for the first time in the Indian Sericulture industry that high quality silk with longer filament length of 1474 m, denier of 2.47, standard size deviation of 0.983 d, maximum size deviation of 1.322, neatness of 96 p, reelability of $85\%$, tenacity of 3.87 g/d, elongation of $22.32\%$ and cohesion of 110 strokes was produced. The superiority of fine denier silkworm breeds and their hybrids are discussed.