OVERVIEW

Conventional breeding or improved rearing practices alone are inadequate to overcome the daunting problems of producing International grade Indian silk through development of productive mulberry varieties and bivoltine silkworm strains.

In this scenario, it was decided to take advantage and harness the benefits of emerging applications of molecular biology and genetic engineering to address various problems that are defying the traditional approaches.

Accordingly, the Central Silk Board (CSB) established Seribiotechnology Research Laboratory (SBRL) in collaboration with the World Bank under the National Sericulture Project in 1993.

SBRL was established as a realization of the necessity for a strong basic research laboratory to conduct research in molecular biology of silkworms/host plants. SBRL is mandated to provide biotechnological solutions to sericulture industry for research in frontier areas of modern biology to support improvement of silkworm races and host plants for the production of quality silk.

In view of its nature of work for both basic research and commercial aspects based on development and management of structural and functional genomic resources, isolation and characterization of novel genes and promoters, creation and maintenance of high end and high throughput facilities and development of transgenics, SBRL has an important role to play in developing the possible research outputs into useful technologies.