Indigenous Cocoon harvester by Coimbatore Firm
The indigenous pedal operated cocoon harvester machine developed by CSIR scientists with the support of Central Silk Board and the Janani Associates, Coimbatore.The scientists at the Central Sericulture Research Institute, who have introduced new varieties of mulberry, new variety bivoltine cocoons like CSR and double hybrid contributing to vertical growth in silk production, have come out with new plastic rotary mountages and pedal operated cocoon harvester to cut down on labour and production costs of defective cocoons.
This indigenous pedal operated machine developed by CSIR scientists with the support of Central Silk Board and the Coimbatore based Janani Associates, will be launched and declared open for sale from March 17. It is being released in the open market after a successful field trial for one year, to farmers at 50 per cent subsidy, is now in great demand from the Seri culturists.The Seri culturists from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have placed orders for more than 300 machines at a cost of Rs 9 lakhs.
More than 3000 units have shown interest to purchase both cocoon harvester machine and new plastic rotary mountages for use in production of quality cocoons.The sericulture farmers hit by large scale migration of agriculture labourers and the laborious work of picking individual cocoons from traditional bamboo mountages had led to farmers loosing 15 per cent of the cocoon yield by harvest of defective cocoons with are not to the size and shape required. But, the use of plastic rotary mountages designed and made of polypropylene material will help farmers produce put ripe warms in mountages and get uniform size, shape fetching additional price of Rs 15 per kg which also helps in reeling.Seri culturist K S Chandrakanth said, that plastic rampages durability is more than the card board mountages, reduce 50 per cent of labour and produce quality cocoons.
CSIR and Silk Board have patented the new machine for harvesting cocoons through the National Research Development Corporation. The team of scientists including CSIR, Director S B Dandin, Srinivasababu, G B Singh, V B Mathur, B K Kariappa, K S Chandrakanth and Janani associates are to be felicitated.
