Studies on the Influence of Seasonal and Regional Aspects on the Quality of Muga Silk

Muga is an exclusive naturally golden coloured wild silk obtained by the Antherea assamensis silkworm species grown in the north-eastern region of India. Although many research studies on Bombyx mori silk can be found, but studies that involve muga silk is uncommon. This article attempts to characterise the muga cocoon of two commercially available crops (Kotia and Jethua) in three prominent muga rearing regions. Reeling studies on these have also been conducted to assess the regional and seasonal influences on silk reelability performance. Kotia cocoons are found to possess better cocoon quality and reeling performance in comparison to Jethua muga cocoons.