OREANDA-NEWS. February 10, 2015. The Union Textiles Minister Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar inaugurated the newly built, state-of-the-art, high capacity silkworm egg cold storage plant here today.

The new plant has been necessitated by the increasing seed production targets of National Silkworm Seed Organization (NSSO) and the leading role southern India has to assume in the coming years in this area.

Up to 1.0 crore disease free layings (dfls) can be comfortably preserved in this plant. In effect, with this plant, the total storage capacity of the Mysore facility would go up to 1.5 crore dfls.

The size of the cold rooms has been specially designed to suit the requirements of sericulture industry and to utilize the space effectively for preserving hibernated bivoltine silkworm seed under different schedules, ranging from 4 to 10 months.

The new Cold Storage Plant runs on a DX system, is constructed with pre-fabricated double skinned insulated panel, and is highly energy efficient. The plant is equipped with PLC based data logger system for automatic monitoring of temperature and humidity inside the cold rooms with alarms. All control panel boards are microprocessor-based, connected with the data logger. This is slated as one of the prestigious milestones that enables NSSO to gallop to the next level of silkworm seed production and distribution in the country. The above cold storage unit will give boost to the production of import substitute bivoltine raw silk in India.

Background

Cold Storage Plants are indispensable in silkworm egg production system, principally to enable uninterrupted and continuous supply of basic and commercial silkworm seed. The silkworm eggs are preserved in these cold storage plants for short term or long term (up to 10 months) to regulate seed supply, matching the demand. The plants also oversee systematic incubation of silkworm eggs prior to its dispatch to farmers. National Silkworm Seed Organization (NSSO), the mulberry silkworm seed production and management arm of Central Silk Board, operates the cold storage plants set up at Mysore, Hosur and Dehradun to manage its seed production and distribution across the country.

A maximum of one crore disease free layings (dfls) can be stored if all the above three existing Cold Storage facilities are utilized to their full capacity. Going forward, the capacity will fall short because the seed production target of NSSO during the first year (2012-13) of the XII plan itself is 1.35 crore dfls with a steep increase to reach 2.44 crore dfls in the terminal year of 2016-17. This projection and the leading role southern India has to assume in the coming years necessitated the establishment of the new facility at Mysore.