Sericulture

Silk is a naturally biodegradable, self-sustaining animal fibre that has earned special relevance in an eco-conscious age, and sericulture — literally, silk farming — is the agro-based industry built around producing it commercially through silkworm rearing. China guarded the secret of silk production for more than 3,000 years before it reached India around 140 BC via Tibet, and silk eventually travelled to Europe along the roughly 7,000-mile Silk Road passing through Baghdad, Tashkent, Damascus and Istanbul. Today more than 29 countries practise sericulture, and India ranks second in the world in silk production, right behind China. The industry rests on three linked components: (i) cultivating food plants for the silkworms, (ii) rearing the silkworms themselves, and (iii) reeling and spinning the raw silk — the first two are agricultural work, the last is an industrial process. India is unusual in producing all four commercial silk types, each from a different silk-moth species and each associated with its own preferred food plant and silk-producing states: Mulberry silk (by far the largest share, from Bombyx mori feed …