Abstract

Bivoltine silkworm genetic resources conserved at Central Sericultural Germplasm Resources Centre, Hosur is the largest collection of its kind maintained in India at one place. All the collections were made over a period of 10 years from 1995 and include 180 exotic (13 countries) and 157 indigenous accessions. These collections are well characterized considering different morphological descriptor states and evaluated for various economically important parameters including standard rearing and reeling traits. Breeders require such well characterized and evaluated materials for identification of races suitable for their breeding programme. With this intention the data were evaluated using the cumulative evaluation index and potential accessions with multiple traits were identified among the germplasm stocks conserved. Accession number BBI-0255 was identified for six specialized characters and Accession number BBE-0224 and BBE-0268 were identified for five specialized characters. Seven accessions were found to possess four specialized traits and remaining accessions were found to be superior in few or more characters in comparison with ruling bivoltine breeds in India (CSR-2 and CSR-4) at present.

Keywords: Bivoltine, silkworm, germplasm, accessions, evaluation index