About 100 bivoltine silk production clusters are being planned in the 12th Plan 2012-2017. Bivoltine is a breed of mulberry silkmoth which produces two generations a year. Addressing the stakeholders of sericulture industry, K. Sambasiva Rao, Union Minister for Textiles, said “the clusters are to be linked to research and development institutes/regional sericulture research stations/ research extension centres.”
“For the first time, a community based approach is being planned to develop the clusters with community based organisation to be created and NGOs encouraged in the bivoltine production base for strengthening the extension mechanism,” he added. A target of 32,000 tonnes of raw silk production has been fixed for the 12th Plan. Union Minister said “The target includes 5,000 tonnes of superior quality of bivoltines raw silk, 6,000 tonnes of improved gradable cross breed mulberry silk and 9,000 tonnes of Vanya silk.”
During the Plan period, the employment generation both direct and indirect would be around 9.27 million.
The Ministry with a view to elevating the living standards of the stakeholders of sericulture industry and to boost the production of raw silk, an additional area of 59,000 hectares of mulberry is proposed to be raised.
The Union Minister along with A.P. Joshi, Union Textile Commissioner, released the high yielding mulberry variety ‘Anantha’, developed by the CSB and ‘Nemahari’, a semi-ecofriendly herbal product to control root knot disease of mulberry plants and a FAQ manual of CSB Seed Act in English, Telugu and Tamil.