author(s)
N Balachandran, M Muthulakshmi, S Nivedita, V Sivaprasad, Kanika Trivedy

abstract
India, a country of tropical climatic conditions is mainly dependent on the crossbreed and multivoltine type of silk production. The total production of all types of raw silk in India is 26480 M.T, out of which mulberry silk is 19476.00 MT which includes 86.86 % multivoltine type and the rest is bivoltine silk. Therefore it becomes a priority to improve the quality and quantity of multivoltine silk. In this context, evolving superior multivoltine parental breeds for tropical conditions in the crossbreed dfls production is very much essential. The multivoltine silkworm genetic resources conserved at Central Sericultural Germplasm Resources Centre, Hosur comprising 69 indigenous and 10 exotic accessions would be handy to select the better multivoltine parent material. Therefore attempts were made through pre-breeding approaches using multivoltine genetic resources in shortlisting superior multivoltine breed combinations for further utilization by the breeders, for improvement of quality silk production.