Vol. 9, Issue 7 (2020)

Author(s):
GC Manjunath, C Doreswamy, A Keerthana, KV Anitharani and RN Bhaskar

Abstract:
The silkworm cocoon crop is majorly affected by diseases like Flacherie, Grasserie, Muscardine and Pebrine. Among these four diseases, flacherie disease is most sever resulting in cocoon crop loss and poor quality raw silk production. The study on efficacy of nine different medicinal plant extracts for the management of late larval flacherie disease of silkworm B. mori L., on cocoon and post cocoon character showed significant results. Among the nine medicinal plant extracts, Asparagus officinalis administration to CSR₂ and PM x CSR₂ silkworms breeds was found effective by enhancing the cocoon quality parameters viz., cocoon weight (17.92 and 13.63 g/10 cocoons), shell weight (3.743 and 2.480 g/10 cocoon shells), pupal weight (14.32 and 11.15 g/10 pupae), shell ratio (20.92 and 18.15 %/10 cocoon shells), silk filament length (1066.33 and 752.00 m) and denier (2.61 and 2.64) in both the breeds compared to control.