Technology Adoption in Sericulture Management in India : A Study

Silk is one of the oldest trades on earth providing a turnover of 2,000 cr for India. Sericulture provides gainful employment, and facilitates economic development and improvement in the quality of life of the people in rural areas. It, therefore, plays a vital role in antipoverty program and prevents migration of rural people to urban area in search of employment. In India, 60 lakh people are involved in this occupation. Sericulturists practice indigenous managerial skill to cultivate silk; because of this India is unable to produce enough quantity of silk to meet the growing demand. A survey shows that sericulturists merely adopt the available technology in their sericulture management, but the critical areas also need to adopt the technology in order to meet the demand. There is an urgent need to adopt specific modern and mechanized systems at all levels of sericulture activities. Some of the low-cost tools discussed in this paper and other tools developed by Japan and CSRI, India, are recommended at various levels of sericulture activities. Sericulturists by making best use of the modern low-cost tools in silk rearing, mulberry harvesting and pruning can enjoy a huge market not only domestically, but also globally