Karnataka State contributes a lion share for the silk production and occupies a prominent place in the sericultural map of the country with well established infrastructure facilities. A need for developing region specific technologies was felt in all sectors of the industry, and to meet the Research and Developmental requirements of the sericulture spread over in all the districts of the State under different agroclimatic conditions. Establishment of the institute was accordingly taken up by the Department of Sericulture, Government of Karnataka during 1981 under the World Bank assisted Karnataka Sericulture Project.

The institute has been established with adequate infrastructure facilities namely, well equipped laboratories, sophisticated equipments and qualified scientists. The Institute is conducting research on all aspects of sericulture right from soil to fabric besides the by-products.

OBJECTIVES: The main object of the Institute is to carry out research on all aspects of sericulture industry with emphasis for various field related problems with a view to increase the productivity with optimisation of the input costs.

The major approaches adopted for achieving the above are:

• To conduct basic research on selected topics of priority;

• To conduct adaptive research on mulberry, silkworm and post cocoon aspects;

• To conduct on-farm trials and frontline research for testing the technologies for their relevance prior to their release to different agroclimatic regions;

• To conduct seminars, group discussions, demonstrations, field shows etc for the transfer of Technology; and

• To improve the technical/Human resources by conducting need based training programmes at different levels.