Assessment of Growth and Performance of Silk Worms (Bombyx mori L.) on Mulberry Leaves at Jimma, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Silkworm (Bombyx mori L.) is essentially monophagous insect feeds solely on mulberry leaves (morus spp.). For performance study seven mulberry silkworm races/hybrids were evaluated at silkworm rearing laboratory at Melko-JARC, six of them are bivoltine and one race was multi-boltine. For bivoltine race eggs were treated with 37% HCl of 1:3 ratios to break the diapauses stage. The objective of the study was to compare larval duration, number of larva left after each molting, cocoon, pupa and shell weight and shell to cocoon ratio among the seven mulberry silk worm races. When comparing the mean weight of 25coocon among the silk worm races the largest was 30.8gm (Kenya 1) and the lowest was 19.7gm (Yellow).And the largest mean weight of 25shell observed was 6.9gm (Kenya 1 and Kenya 5), the lowest was 2.4gm (Yellow). For both weight of 25 cocoons and 25 pupa yellow silk worms race was significantly difference among the rest silk worm races (p < 0.05). For 25 shell weight of yellow silk worm race was significantly difference among the rest silk worm races and there is also significance difference between China 2 and Kenya 5 silk worm races. There is also significance of hatchability (p<0.05).

Keywords: Bivoltine, Bombyx mori L., cocoon, Jimma, mulberry leaf, shell, Silk Worms