Role of labour saving and non hazardous disinfection technique on the silkworm seed crop rearing by the progressive farmer - A Case Study

Sri.S.V.Rajashekar, Retired Head Master of Yeraganahalli, Alur Taluk, Hassan district of Karnataka is one of the innovative progressive farmer having 2.5 acres of mulberry garden with a rearing house of 60’x23’x15’ dimension. He takes up 5 ~ 6 silkworm seed crop rearing in a year. He rears about 550 ~ 600 disease free layings of the pure breed CSR2 per rearing. In order to overcome the difficult task of disinfection which is hazardous to health added to this the labour problem, he has innovated a disinfection technique in which he has adopted drip pipes inside the rearing house and the main pipe(Poly tube) connected to all the drip pipes which in turn connected to 1 hp motor. During disinfection, 200 lts of disinfectants (Chlorine-di-oxide with lime) will be sprayed through the drip pipes and within 10 minutes the whole rearing house will be drenched with the disinfectants without the usage of face mask. As the pipes are permanently fixed, he need not hire any labour during disinfection and by which he is saving Rs.600/-per disinfection with a total savings of Rs.7200/- year. His total investment for the new innovation is Rs. 11,500/- as against the present disinfection machine and face mask of Rs.22,000/-. His systematic disinfection method is comparable to the disinfection made through electrical machines and he is achieving an average cocoon yield of 70kg./ 100dfls in the seed crop rearing. In addition, exposure to hazardous chemicals will be avoided to an extent of 100% in the new innovative disinfection technique while in the present disinfection method full face mask is very much required but the body contact to the disinfectants is very common. The details of the production cost of the new innovations along with the comparative benefit over the existing disinfection method will be discussed. Key Words: Innovative, Labour Problem, Disinfection, Seed crop, Rearing House.