author(s)
Bharathi MC, RS Umakanth and Ashoka KS

abstract
Silk is produced by large-scale rearing of silkworms and popularly known as Sericulture. Silk is made up of two proteins namely sericin and fibroin. Silk proteins are accumulated in the silk glands of the silkworm larva which consumes and ingests the mulberry leaf. In the present study, crude sericin was extracted from the cocoon shell and raw-silk of popular bivoltine and multivoltine breeds of the mulberry silkworm, Bombyx mori by high temperature autoclaving method. Two bivoltine breeds viz. NB₄D_2, and CSR₂; two multivoltine breeds MU₃₀₃, and PM were selected for the present study. Along with extraction the crude sericin powder by using acetic acid; quantitative characters like cocoon weight, shell %, silk filament length of these breeds were also analysed and correlated based on the results obtained. The experimental results revealed that the sericin extracted from silk and cocoon shell of CSR₂ was higher than NB₄D₂ among bivoltines and PM higher than MU₃₀₃ among multivoltines.