Application of genetic principles for improving silk production

Abstract

During the last three decades, silk production increase benefited, to a great extent, from the application of genetic principles in the silkworm breeding programmes. The conventional breeding methods such as progeny testing, exploitation of hybrid vigour, genotype environment interaction coupled with utilization of silkworm stocks that carry a translocated W chromosome provided continued success. Recent developments in transgenic silkworm technology, application of DNA markers for strain characterization and construction of linkage maps, and understanding the genetics of viral resistance provide requisite tools that can expedite further silkworm improvement.