Parental Selection for Productivity Improvement in Indian Tropical Tasar Silkworm, Antheraea mylitta Drury (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae)

Global demand for Vanya silks in general and tasar silk in particular, call-for sustainable utilization of the country’s seri-biodiversity potential. Viability and productivity proportion of tasarculture in terms of seeds, cocoons and essentially raw silk, need attention for its vital role in reforming the livelihood and economic condition of tribal farmers. The conventional approaches on basic stock maintenance, commercial seed production, selective use of parental races or parents for heterosis and heterobeltiosis, method of backcrossing to exploit the traits of commercial importance and applying the advantage of genotype x environment (G x E) interactions are indispensable. In spite of current knowledge on sophisticated transgenic silkworm, appropriate application of on-hand parental resource material and methodologies can expedite tasar silk productivity improvement in addition to up-keep of the agro based cottage industry’s cost-effectiveness

The Natural History of The Silkewormes and their Flies

Images published with permission of The British Library Board (434.f.10), the Huntington Library and Proquest. Further reproduction is prohibited.Images published with permission of The British Library Board (434.f.10), the Huntington Library and Proquest. Further reproduction is prohibited.Images published with permission of The British Library Board (434.f.10), the Huntington Library and Proquest. Further reproduction is prohibited.Images published with permission of The British Library Board (434.f.10), the Huntington Library and Proquest. Further reproduction is prohibited.This study examines the overlap between natural philosophy and humanist imitation in two works by Thomas Moffet: his reference work Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalum Theatrum (written c.1589) and his poem The Silkewormes, and their Flies (1599). Both works draw extensively on contemporary and classical authors in order to create intertextual collages that look backwards towards the natural unity found in the Garden of Eden. This leads me to argue that The Silkewormes’ compositional style shares more in common with Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur Du Bartas's Sepmaine (1578, 1584) than with Virgilian didactic poetry. I consider throughout Elizabethan notions of authority, composition and originality, and conclude that Silkewormes merits critical attention for its skilful synthesis of diverse material in creating a work appropriate for Mary Herbert and her household at Wilton.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Characterization And Rejuvenation Of Local Ecorace Sukinda In Odhisa State

An experiment of outdoor rearing was conducted with the available Sukinda (TV) stock of BSM&TC, Sundargarh (SG), CTSSS, Lakha (CTS) and CTR&TI, Ranchi. The objective of this activity is to utilize economic wild life, conserving the associated environment for sustainable rural and tribal development (Raffi and Ramanujam, 2001; Gill and Lal, 2002; Mahapatra, 2009).

The crop performance of SG showed highest cocoon yield i.e., 83 cocoons / dfl in 1st crop followed by 80 cocoons / dfl in 3rd crop and 42 cocoons / dfl during 2nd crop. Yellow coloured cocoons dominated (94-96%) the population in all the three crops. The cocoon weight, Shell weight and Silk Ratio were (9.72g, 1.07g&11 %) in 1st crop,(9.77g,1.05g & 10.75%) in 2nd crop and (11.11g,1.79g & 16.11%) in commercial third crop season. The ERR were 41.64 %, 50.00 % and 74.51% in 1st, 2nd and 3rd crop respectively. This approach for semi-domesticated and commercially exploited Sukinda ecoraces can further enhances their potential because of better inherent performance levels under in situ (Suryanarayana and Srivastava, 2005) over the current basic and commercial stocks maintained ex situ.
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MultiBac: expanding the research toolbox for multiprotein complexes

This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.Protein complexes composed of many subunits carry out most essential processes in cells and, therefore, have become the focus of intense research. However, deciphering the structure and function of these multiprotein assemblies imposes the challenging task of producing them in sufficient quality and quantity. To overcome this bottleneck, powerful recombinant expression technologies are being developed. In this review, we describe the use of one of these technologies, MultiBac, a baculovirus expression vector system that is particularly tailored for the production of eukaryotic multiprotein complexes. Among other applications, MultiBac has been used to produce many important proteins and their complexes for their structural characterization, revealing fundamental cellular mechanisms

Prospect and importance of green mulching on the soil status of tropical tasar plantation fields in India

The soils of tropical tasar plantation fields in general are sloppy and are primarily deficient of nutrition due to top soil erosion and constant leaf productivity exploitation to rear tasar silk insect, Antheraea mylitta Drury. The rainfed field of Terminalia tomentosa (W&A) plantation has been evaluated for soil fortification with green mulching through legumes, Sun hemp (Crotalaria juncea), Daincha (Sesbania aculeata), Green gram (Vigna radiatus) and Black gram (Vigna mungo) during rainy season. The mulching has enhanced the water holding, moisture retention, electrical conductivity, organic carbon, nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) and reduced the bulk density and pore space of soil. Among the legumes, Sun hemp has shown higher improvement of water holding (56.9%), moisture content (68.5 & 37.9%) at 30 and 45 cm depth, electrical conductivity (0.30 mhos/cm), bulk density (1.12g/ cm³), pore space (50.4%), organic carbon (0.61%), nitrogen (109 kg/ha) and potassium (254 kg/ha) of the soil, and could augment the leaf yield of tasar food plant with 24.8 MT/ha. The study infers the prospect and importance of green mulching in tasar food plantation in improving the physico chemical nature and fertility status of soil to attain optimal leaf yield in the T. tomentosa food plant

The Effect of Silkworm Pupae (Bombyx Mori) Meal to Substitute Fish Meal on Production and Physical Quality of Quail Eggs (Cortunix Cortunix Japonica)

The aims of this study was to determine the effect of substitution of fish meal protein withsilkworm pupae (Bombyx mori) on quail performances and egg quality. The experiment was a completlyrandomized design (CDR) with four treatments and four replications and ten birds of each replication.The treatment diets were R0: diet contain 8% fish meal, without silkworm pupae (control), R1: dietcontain silkworm pupae subtituted of 25% fish meal protein, R2: diet contain silkworm pupae subtitutedof 50% fish meal, protein and R3: diet contain silkworm pupae subtituted of 75% fish meal protein. Theresults showed that substitution of 25% up to 75% significantly (P<0.05) reduced feed conversion ratio,significantly (P<0.05) increased egg production and did not affecting physical quality of quail eggs. Inconclusion, silkworm pupae can be used 25% up to 75% replacing protein fish meal

Predation on the Pupae of Saturniidae (Lepidoptera) by Gray Squirrels in Wisconsin

(excerpt) Owing to their large body size, the larvae and pupae ofgiant silkworm moths (Saturniidae) are ideal food for many animals. Winter predation on the pupae of Hyalophora cecropia (L.) in Illinois by birds (Waldbauer and Sternburg, Ecology 48:312-315, 1967) is a well known example

Protein-based materials, toward a new level of structural control

Through billions of years of evolution nature has created and refined structural proteins for a wide variety of specific purposes. Amino acid sequences and their associated folding patterns combine to create elastic, rigid or tough materials. In many respects, nature’s intricately designed products provide challenging examples for materials scientists, but translation of natural structural concepts into bio-inspired materials requires a level of control of macromolecular architecture far higher than that afforded by conventional polymerization processes. An increasingly important approach to this problem has been to use biological systems for production of materials. Through protein engineering, artificial genes can be developed that encode protein-based materials with desired features. Structural elements found in nature, such as β-sheets and α-helices, can be combined with great flexibility, and can be outfitted with functional elements such as cell binding sites or enzymatic domains. The possibility of incorporating non-natural amino acids increases the versatility of protein engineering still further. It is expected that such methods will have large impact in the field of materials science, and especially in biomedical materials science, in the future