Integrated drought management technologies and mulberry sericulture

摘要

Sericulture is widely practised by the farmers in semi-arid zones of south India comprising of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu where, drought is a recurring problem. Meteoro-logical Department predicts 15-20% probability of drought in these states. Besides reducing mulberry yield, drought leads to partial or total silkworm crop losses. A recent survey reveals that during drought, there is 20% reduction in mulberry yield, 10% higher disease incidence, 5% reduction in cocoon yield and production of inferior quality cocoons. However, these percentages depend on the intensity and frequency of drought. Though technologies are available to mitigate the drought in sericulture, adoption of any one technology will not give desirable impact. R&D initiatives like understanding the monsoon behaviour, agro-meteorology, dry land mulberry cultivation and high temperature silkworm rearing have contributed to the development of useful technological outputs in mulberry cultivation and cocoon production. Integrated drought management technologies (Table 1) would help the farmers to mitigate the drought effectively.