Sericin as a Nutritional Supplement to Enhance Cocoon, Pupal Parameters and Grainase Properties of Silkworm Bombyx mori L.

Abstract

During the raw silk degumming process, the water-soluble natural protein sericin is discarded as waste material in the sericulture industry of Bangladesh. In this study, various amount of sericin (as nutritional supplement) treated mulberry leaves was fed to three different silkworm groups and its effect on cocoon, pupal parameters as well as grainase properties of the silkworms was evaluated. The results indicated that fecundity increased with the decrease of the concentration of sericin for all treatment groups. There was no significant difference among the treatment groups and the control group for fecundity value, but in the case of hatching percentage (%), all the treatment groups showed the reverse trend with fecundity. Cocoon production was increased by 23.91% when silkworm was fed with 0.50% sericin-treated mulberry leaves at chawki stage (first to the third instar) compared to the control group.