Management of summer grainage of eri silkworm Samia ricini (Donovan) for better performance

Abstract

Eri silkworm, Samia ricini (Donovan) is multivoltine and has several broods in a year. In the traditional eri growing area of North East India, the farmers conduct eri rearing in four crop seasons, that is, spring, summer, autumn and winter due to spent time in others agricultural crop. Although the suitable climatic conditions are spring and autumn seasons in this zone for eri cocoon production, but during summer the temperature raises up to 35 to 39˚C with fluctuation of temperature and humidity that interfere in the eri seed production and rearing activities resulted emergence of crippled moths, poor coupling aptitude and poor egg laying capacity, unfertilized eggs, poor embryonic development, desiccation of eggs and leads to hatching failure. In these circumstances, an experiment was conducted to maintain the temperature and humidity in the ITK mode of operation during summer grainage for enhancement of the realized fecundity and hatching percentage and to overcome the others problems during summer grainage. Experimental data revealed that overall performance of grainage characters during summer in the treated lot were significantly better than the control lot.

Keywords: Eri silkworm, Samia ricini (Donovan), management, summer grainage, performance.