The Role of Mechanization in Improving Sericulture Efficiency

Sericulture – the farming of silkworms for silk cocoon production – is one of India’s most labour-intensive agricultural activities. According to the Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute (CSRTI), Mysore, labour wages alone account for nearly 59% of the total cost of silk cocoon production, with mulberry cultivation consuming 22% and silkworm rearing 37% of that expenditure. As farm labour becomes scarcer and wages rise due to rural-to-urban migration, mechanization has emerged as the most practical path forward for sericulturists who want to remain profitable. The introduction of purpose-built machines – from shoot harvesters to cocoon deflossers – is steadily transforming this ancient craft into a modern, scalable agricultural enterprise.

Why mechanization matters in sericulture 🔗

The economics of silk production leave little room for inefficiency. Data from CSRTI Mysore shows that a sericulture farm requires approximately 1,589 mandays per acre per year – around 240 for mulberry cultivation and 395 for silkworm rearing alone. When labour is scarce or costly, these numbers become unsustainable for small and medium-scale farmers.

Mechanization directly addresses this by boosting the output of each worker. For instance, manual leaf chopping yields around 20 kg per hour, while a mechanized leaf chopper achieves 200 kg per hour – a tenfold improvement. Similarly, cocoon deflossing jumps from 5 kg per hour manually to 50 kg per hour with a machine. These gains translate directly into lower costs and higher farm income. CSRTI Mysore’s analysis shows that farmers who adopt mechanization across key activities can raise annual profits per acre by as much as 72%, particularly those who currently rely entirely on hired labour.

Beyond cost savings, mechanization also ensures timeliness – a critical factor in sericulture where delays in feeding, bed cleaning, or mounting can lead to crop failure. Machines help farmers carry out multiple tasks simultaneously and at scale, enabling them to expand their mulberry area and rear larger silkworm populations without proportionally increasing their workforce.

Key machines used in silkworm rearing 🔗

A range of machines has been developed specifically for different stages of silkworm rearing, each targeting a labour-intensive bottleneck in the production cycle. The following are the most significant ones currently in use.

Mulberry shoot harvester 🔗

Before silkworms can be fed, mulberry shoots must be harvested – a task that is both time-consuming and physically demanding. Traditional sickle-based harvesting yields roughly 200 kg of shoots per worker per day. CSRTI Mysore has developed and validated a power tiller-operated mulberry shoot harvester that can process 1,000 to 1,200 kg of shoots per hour in paired-row plantations. Knapsack-type bush cutters, which are more accessible to smaller farms, achieve 600 to 800 kg per hour. This shift reduces both the time and cost of shoot supply – which is the foundation of the entire rearing cycle. The cost of shoot harvesting per metric tonne drops from ₹500 manually to just ₹125 with mechanization, a 75% saving.

Leaf chopping machine 🔗

Young silkworms in the early instars (larval stages) cannot consume whole leaves or shoots – they require finely chopped leaf pieces sized according to their developmental stage. Manual chopping is slow and labour-intensive, especially in large-scale chawki (young age) rearing centres. The CSRTI leaf chopper processes 225 to 250 kg of leaves per hour and is available in different sizes to match the feeding requirements of silkworms at each instar. Mechanized leaf chopping reduces the daily chopping cost for a 5,000 dfls (disease-free laying) operation from ₹2,000 to just ₹200 – a 90% cost reduction. Properly sized leaf pieces also reduce wastage, as silkworms consume them more completely.

Flame gun for rearing house disinfection 🔗

Disease control is one of the most critical challenges in silkworm rearing. Bacterial, viral, and fungal pathogens can wipe out an entire crop if rearing houses and equipment are not properly disinfected between batches. While chemical sprayers – both hand-operated and engine-powered – are widely used, fire is considered among the most effective disinfectants available. CSRTI Mysore developed an LPG-based flame gun specifically for sericulture use. It is used to disinfect the rearing house, clean mountages, and destroy silk floss and diseased larvae. The high temperatures achieved instantly eliminate bacteria, viruses, and fungal spores. Compared to chemical spraying, flame disinfection is faster and leaves no harmful chemical residues that could harm silkworms in subsequent rearing cycles. The cost of disinfecting a rearing house for 300 dfls drops from ₹250 manually to ₹100 with the flame gun – a 60% saving.

It is worth noting that the flame gun is one of several disinfection tools catalogued by the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC) under technologies developed for sericulture, alongside high-pressure electric sprayers for large-scale rearing houses.

Jobarai machine for separating mature silkworms 🔗

As silkworms reach the end of the fifth instar, they mature and are ready to spin cocoons. At this point, they must be separated from the rearing bed and transferred to mountages promptly. If mature worms are not picked out quickly, they begin spinning inside the rearing bed itself, producing tangled, unusable cocoons – a significant quality and economic loss.

Manual picking of mature silkworms is extremely slow. A single worker can pick worms from just 30 dfls per day. The Jobarai machine, developed at CSRTI Mysore, mechanizes this process and can separate mature silkworms from 100 dfls – roughly 40,000 to 45,000 worms – per hour. The machine uses a composite cocoon pusher with 156 pegs fixed to a rectangular plate to efficiently sort and move worms. This not only eliminates the labour bottleneck of manual picking but also ensures that worms are mounted promptly, directly improving cocoon quality and reducing the incidence of bed-spun cocoons.

Cocoon harvester 🔗

Once silkworms have completed spinning, the cocoons must be harvested from the mountages – the frames used to hold the worms during the spinning stage. Manual harvesting requires workers to carefully remove each cocoon by hand, which is time-consuming when handling hundreds of mountages.

CSRTI Mysore has patented an electrically operated cocoon harvester designed for use with plastic collapsible mountages. The machine uses a pair of counter-rotating separator shafts to detach cocoons using frictional force, processing each 60 cm × 90 cm mountage in just 4 to 5 seconds. It can harvest cocoons from 150 to 170 mountages (equivalent to 100 dfls) per hour. As cocoons pass through the shafts, they are also partially deflossed and cleaned, with dust and debris separated before the cocoons collect in a tray. The cost of harvesting per 100 dfls falls from ₹600 manually to ₹150 with the machine – a 75% reduction.

Cocoon deflosser 🔗

Every cocoon is wrapped in an outer layer of loose, tangled silk fibres called floss. This floss is unreelable and must be removed before the cocoon can be processed for silk reeling. Without deflossing, the reeling end – the point at which the continuous filament begins – cannot be located. According to NRDC’s technology listing, a worker can manually defloss approximately 20 kg of cocoons per hour. The mechanized deflossing machine processes 50 to 100 kg per hour depending on its capacity – up to 800 kg in an eight-hour shift. CSRTI Mysore has developed both hand-operated deflossers for small-scale rearers and motorized versions for medium and large operations. Deflossed cocoons command better market prices, making the deflosser a valuable investment even for smaller farms.

The role of CSRTI Mysore in driving mechanization 🔗

CSRTI Mysore, established in 1961 under the Central Silk Board, Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, is the country’s premier research institution for tropical sericulture. Over the past two decades, its Sericulture Engineering and Reeling division has focused specifically on designing tools and machines that reduce production costs, eliminate drudgery, and improve timeliness across all stages of silk cocoon production. The institute’s mandate explicitly includes achieving “reduction in cost of production, drudgery, operational time and save on resources” through fabrication of sericulture-specific equipment.

What sets CSRTI’s approach apart is its emphasis on practicality. The machines developed are designed to be fabricated using locally available materials – mild steel, PVC, bearings, and standard motors – keeping them affordable and repairable in rural settings. Several technologies have been patented and commercially validated under what the institute describes as the “3E formula” of effectiveness, easiness, and economic viability. This ensures that the benefits of mechanization are not restricted to large commercial operations but are accessible to small and medium farmers across southern and central India.

Research published on ResearchGate on modernization through mechanization in sericulture confirms that these technologies have had a measurable positive impact in states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh – which together contribute over 85% of India’s mulberry silk output.

Economic impact: from subsistence to profitability 🔗

The combined effect of mechanizing key activities across the production chain is substantial. CSRTI Mysore’s profitability analysis demonstrates that a farmer who fully mechanizes – from land preparation and shoot harvesting to silkworm picking, cocoon harvesting, and deflossing – can increase annual profits per acre by up to 72% compared to full dependence on hired labour. Even partial mechanization yields significant gains: farmers who mechanize 25% of their hired-labour activities see a 9% profit increase, while those mechanizing 50% gain 21%.

Mechanization also reduces the total operational cost of mulberry leaf production by 35 to 40%, which in turn cuts the cost of silk cocoon production by 25 to 30%. This cost compression makes Indian sericulture more competitive with imported silk and more attractive to the next generation of farmers, many of whom are deterred by the physical demands of traditional rearing methods.

Another overlooked benefit is scalability. With machines handling the most labour-intensive tasks, a single farming household can manage a larger mulberry area and rear more silkworm batches per year without proportionally increasing their workforce. This directly translates into higher income from the same land.

Challenges and the path ahead 🔗

Despite the clear benefits, adoption of mechanization in sericulture is not without hurdles. The initial capital investment in machines can be difficult for smallholder farmers to manage. Availability of spare parts and repair services in remote sericulture regions also remains a challenge. These issues have led to growing interest in cooperative machinery sharing programmes and government-backed subsidy schemes that provide access to equipment without requiring individual ownership.

On the technology front, the next generation of sericulture mechanization is moving towards automation and sensor-based systems. Automated feeding mechanisms, IoT-enabled rearing environment monitors, and integrated disease detection tools are being explored as ways to further reduce the skill requirements for successful silkworm rearing while maintaining high cocoon quality. These developments represent a continuation of the same principle that has guided CSRTI’s work: making sericulture more accessible, efficient, and profitable for farmers at every scale.

What do you think? As mechanization reduces the physical burden of silkworm rearing, could it also make sericulture more attractive to younger generations who might otherwise leave farming? And given that labour savings from machines depend heavily on scale, how should government policy prioritize support – individual machine ownership or cooperative shared-equipment models?

References

1. https://csrtimys.res.in/structure/seri-engineering-division
2. https://www.csrtimys.res.in/mechanization
3. https://slideshare.net/suresharjunan/mechanisation-in-sericulture
4. https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/9169/1/Unit-3.pdf
5. https://nrdcindia.com/TechnologyLists/9
6. https://www.quickcompany.in/patents/harvesting-of-silkworm-cocoons-from-mountages
7. https://nrdcindia.com/technologyDetals/258/COCOON%20DEFLOSSING%20MACHINE
8. https://www.csrtimys.res.in/
9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298220462_Modernisation_through_mechanization_in_sericulture