Vol. 6, Issue 1 (2017)

Author(s):
Abid K Tantray, Shamim A Dar, Ifat Bashir, Shahnawaz A and Shabir A Bhat

Abstract:
Daily gonad weight increase and gonad tissue somatic indices of two commercial silkworm hybrids viz., CSR2 x CSR4 and PM x CSR2 were studied after dietary supplementation of botanical based and synthetic ascorbic acid. It was observed that both the sources of ascorbic acid exerted significant improvement on gonad weight of 5th instar larva. In general, the gonad weight was more in females (16.44 to 17.22%) than males (13.58 to 16.32%) over their respective controls though male gonad appeared bigger visually in all the sources of ascorbic acid. But the opposite trend was observed in case of tissue somatic index. Male had more tissue somatic index than the females.