New Bivoltine Purelines for Better Cocoon Production

News source: Philippine Council for Agriculture,
Forestry and Natural Resources
Research and Development
For further information, see Supsup, G. E. and J.P. Abuan. New bivoltine purelines for better cocoon production. SRDI, 2001., 2003-02-01

Survey of Genetic Resources

A STUDY was conducted to enrich the existing gene pool of bivoltine silkworm strain in the Philippines. Researchers attempted to evolve, evaluate, characterize, utilize, and maintain genetic resources of bivoltine silkworm.

Identification of Important Characters

Eleven silkworm hybrids were collected from India, South Korea, Japan, and other sericulture agencies in the Philippines. The silkworms were mass produced. Important qualitative characteristics of the hybrids were isolated. At the fifth generation stage, the qualitative expression of the silkworm lines being purified was fixed by cellular rearing. During cellular rearing, 300 larvae were selected from each line and were arranged in complete randomized design with three replications to evaluate the quantitative characters.

Four Promising Lines

Among the 11 hybrids collected, 13 lines were evolved. These lines surpassed the standard norms in important economic characteristics of silkworms. Of the 13 evolved lines, four were found to be promising. These four lines surpassed the check variety in terms of hatching, cocoon shell percentage, single cocoon weight, cocoon yield box, and effective rearing rate.

Download the PDF. of this document, 22,519 bytes (22.0 KB).