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Abstract

The study evaluates the commercial characteristics of the bivoltine pure breeds APS12, J2, CSR53, A3, H281, RB18 and the control breeds KA and NB4D2 to assess the potential of these pure breeds in expressing differential quantitative traits for breeding programs. The pure breeds reared evaluated in all the three season of the year exhibited superiority and consistent mean values for hatching percentage, effective rate of rearing, cocoon weight, shell weight, shell ratio, pupation rate, pupation percentage, denier and raw silk recovery, revealed the superiority of the pure breeds over the control breeds in all the three seasons of the year. Hatching percentage exceeded 90% in all pure breeds, with H281n showing the highest rate at 95.21%. The highest cocoon weight was observed in the pure breed H281 (1.71 g), while J2 recorded the highest shell weight (0.35 g) and shell ratio (21.25%). Pupation rates surpassed 90% in all pure breeds and filament length was recorded above 1,000 meters in the control breeds. The study results demonstrate that the pure breeds exhibit superior performance in most economic traits, likely due to inherent genetic advancements. However, the control breeds were superior in certain traits, such as fecundity, larval weight, filament length and denier. Seasonal performance also varied, with the monsoon season (June to October) being the most favorable for all pure breeds, followed by post-monsoon (November to February) and pre-monsoon (March to May).