Nutritional Composition of Castor Genotypes and its Influence On Growth Attributes of Eri Silkworm (Philosamia ricini)

Abstract

Eri silkworm (Philosamia ricini) is one of the most exploited, domesticated, and commercialized Vanya silkworms. Eri silk yield and productivity depend heavily on the feeds ingested by Eri silkworms, which will vary depending on the feed sources. A study was undertaken to evaluate different castor genotypes viz., GCH 4, GCH 7, DCH 519, TMV 5, along with local variety for the nutritional composition and its influence on the growth and economic attributes of Eri silkworm. The treatments were laid out in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The performance of eri silkworm viz., growth attributes, and economic parameters were studied by feeding them with the leaves of five castor genotypes separately in the tray rearing method. The genotypes showed significant differences in growth and economic parameters of eri silkworm. Among the various genotypes, GCH 4 genotypes showed superior among all the other genotypes on nutritional composition, growth attributes, and economic parameters, followed by genotype DCH 519.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.000656

Pages

169 - 175

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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