Artificial diet is being preferred for chawki worms in Japan to save labour. But it not in usage in India as mulberry is a perennial plant.

1. SILKWORM NUTRID
Kuntamalla Sujatha Gudimalla Prashanthi,
Asst Professor, Sericulture faculty, Dept of Zoology,
Kakatiya University, Hanamkonda, LB College,
Warangal. Warangal.
Madichetty Sai Abhishek,
Engineer, Bangalore.
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2. The insect nutrition refer to food that insects eat to satisfy their nutritional
needs, feeding behavior and sensory physiology that is associated with the food
that they get for growth, tissue maintenance and reproduction with energy that
is needed to maintain the above functions. The different types of insect
nutrition are polyunsaturated fatty acid and artificial diet.
Sericulture is a sustainable farm economic enterprise practiced under
different agro-climatic conditions for upliftment of poor. India is not only second
largest producer of silk (26,587 MTS) with a 12% sharing global raw silk with a
total annual consumption of 31,620 MTS.
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3. Artificial diet is not a natural food, its components may be
plant extracts, grounded material polysaccharides, semi
purified protein, lipid vitamins, minerals, amino acids that
are combined with other nutrients and water.
Artificial diet was applied for first time in 1960 (Japan) for
rearing chawki worms in Co-operative rearing houses from
1st to 2nd instar only. It helps in saving labor.
REQUIREMENTS
• The main requirements is formulating of artificial diet for
silkworms
• Meet their quantitative and qualitative requirements
• Suitable physical properties
• Microbial contamination free diet
• Palatability of diet
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4. Qualitative and quantitative requirements:
The basic components of artificial diet:-
• Mulberry leaf powder
• Deflated soya meal
• Amino acids
• Sugar and starch
• Sterols and other lipids
• Vitamins
• Minerals
Mulberry leaf powder:- Artificial diet
comprises large amount of dried
mulberry leaf powder which acts as
feeding inducers that contains 35%
proteins, 20 - 21% of carbohydrates, 9
- 11% of cellulose, 8 - 10% of mineral
salts and 4 - 5% of lipids.
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5. Deflated soya meal:- Deflated soya meal is main protein source.
Amino acids:- The amino acid requirements are
1. Essential amino acids
2. Semi essential amino acids
3. Non-essential amino acids.
Nearly 13 essential and semi essential amino acids and 5 non
essential amino acids are required for silkworm growth,
development and reproduction.
Sugar and Starch:- Sugar or glucose is not only energy source but
also a feeding inducer used in nutrid, while starch is another
requirement whose utilization depends upon the silkworm strains.
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6. • Sterols and Lipids:- Insects including
silkworms use dietary sterols as
structural cell components. Silkworm
utilize β sitosterol which is accelerated
in presence of fatty acids. The other
sterols required are stigma sterol,
cholesterol and ergosterol. Insects are
unable to synthesize or produce
sufficient quantity of linoleic and
linolenic acid that are required as
nutrition.
• Fatty acids in combination with sterols
accelerate silkworm larval growth and
development. The fatty acids present
in mulberry leaves are linolenic,
palmilic, linoleic, lauric, stearic and
oleic acids are required for silkworm
growth.
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7. Vitamins:- The silkworm larvae requires 9 vitamins of
which ascorbic acid is necessary as it is a strong phago
stimulatant for silkworms.
Minerals:- Calcium, Magnesium, Manganese, Iron,
Zinc, Potassium, Phosphorus are added in the nutrid of
silkworm.
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8. Suitable physical properties
• Mulberry leaves satisfy
nutritional requirement that
reflects the rate of growth and
silk production. Dose and balance
of the dietary ingredients are
important while formulating the
diet.
• These physical factors play an
important role in quality
maintenance. The physical
property is modified by increase
or decrease the cellulose powder
which in turn accelerates the
silkworm’s food consumption.
Hardness of diet depends on (1)
autoclaving time (2) quantity of
glucose or sucrose
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9. Microbial contamination free diet
• Bacteriological examination of the diet showed that
antibiotics are effective in preventing spread of
bacteria. If antimicrobial agents are not added to diet,
the feed decomposes and such diet will not be
consumed by larvae and will subsequently die. Hence,
dietary concentrations are to be maintained.
REFERENCES
Literature collected
from internet and
textbooks
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