Impact of Technological Changes on Income Opportunities in Mulberry Sericulture: An Economic Analysis.

Like agriculture, technological breakthrough took place in Indian sericulture after 1990s. The introduction of high yielding mulberry varieties such as V₁ and S36 and silkworm races like CSR₂ x CSR₄ (bivoltine hybrids) and PM x CSR₂ (crossbreed) have had a greater impact on productivity and quality of silk cocoon. This has helped to produce international grade silks (2A and 4A). Gobichettipalayam of Erode District and Udumalpet of Coimbatore District are the major bivoltine cocoon producing clusters in the State of Tamil Nadu. An attempt has been made in this paper to find out the impact of new technologies on income from sericulture. A field study was performed to estimate the costs and returns of two groups of farmers, viz., Group 1 (technology adopters) and Group 2 (technology non-adopters). The cost and benefit ratios were estimated to be 1:1.73 and 1:1.63 for Groups 1 and 2 farmers respectively. In general, in both the regions, the farmers possess entrepreneurial attitude and risk-taking nature. Moreover, returns from sericulture are higher than those of other agricultural crops. To overcome the major problems of marketing of cocoon and price instability, suitable policy measures, such as minimum support price for commercial cocoons is to be fixed in order to promote bivoltine cocoon production in the study regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]