Connect the mulberry leaf quality and the silkworm cocoon traits through correlation and regression analysis

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the impact on mulberry leaf quality and silkworm growth performance by the application of growth promoter. In the irrigated mulberry field experiment was carried out in Randomized Block Design layout with four replications and five treatments. Result showed that higher quality of mulberry leaves was obtained on Effective Microorganisms (EM) treated plots compared to others because beneficial microorganism in the EM enhanced the plant growth metabolism to increase their growth. As for correlation analysis, all leaf quality traits were highly significantly positive correlated with silkworm cocoon traits. In simple linear regression analysis, the mulberry leaf quality traits were significantly influenced the silkworm cocoon traits except leaf protein with cocoon weight (Adj R2 = - 0.30337) which has negative relationship between them. Highly close relationship was noticed on total carbohydrate content on larval weight (Adj R2 = 0.93655) followed by total chlorophyll content on shell weight (Adj R2 = 0.90569), silk gland weight (Adj R2 = 0.87275), ERR (Adj R2 = 0.84312) and total carbohydrate content on shell weight (Adj R2 = 0.84606). Thus, the total chlorophyll and carbohydrate content might be a good trait and mostly responsible for producing good quality cocoons.