BioQuest | Vol. 1, No. 1 (July 2017)

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The Muga silkworm, Antheraea assamensis

Helfer endemic to Assam and its surrounding states is

the unique gift of God to North Eastern Region of India

for its lustrous golden yellow silk. The congenial

climatic conditions and availability of food plants made

is the main reason for the habitat of many sericigenous

insects. From time immemorial, Muga culture has been

practiced by the rural folk of the region and become a

part and parcel of their livelihood and tradition.

Although Muga culture has tremendous scope to

develop rural economy through sustainable income as

well as employment generation, the industry as a whole

is wriggling under pressure due to certain inherent

constraints.

The constraints confronting development of

Muga silk industry includes- non availability of quality

seed in time, high cost of seed, high incidence of

diseases and pests, uncertainty of crop due to natural

vagaries, lack of technical guidance to overcome the

barriers, marketing and financial constraints etc.

Further, several technologies and package and practices

of Muga culture have already developed but due to the

lack of appropriate mechanism of technology transfers,

motivation and continuous support, the farmers are not

yet to aware of the technologies to overcome the

barriers for successful crop production. Hence, a study

has been undertaken to address and overcome all these

issues so that the farmers can able to rear the successful

crops in all the seasons.

Enhancement of rural economy through technology intervention for

sustainable Muga culture in upper Brahmaputra Valley of Assam

Das R*, Das K, Goswami D, Subrahmanyam G

Central Muga Eri Research & Training Institute, Central Silk Board, Jorhat, Assam (India)

* Corresponding author email: drranjanadas2@gmail.com

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During the period, 150 nos. of beneficiary

were selected from 3 districts (50 from each district) i.e.

Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur of Assam for up

gradation of skills for sustainable employment

generation through technology intervention. Till the

completion of March, 2017, 6 nos. of awareness

programs (Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur

districts) were conducted covering 389 nos farmers for

creating awareness among them towards expansion and

development of Muga culture in connection with

maintenance and management of Muga host plant for

rearing of Muga silkworm. 9 nos. of front line

demonstration of technology conducted to 438 nos.

farmers where, all the pre cocoon improved

technologies were demonstrated from host plant

management to cocooning of Muga silkworm in the

major sericulture villages of Sivasagar, Dibrugarh and

Lakhimpur districts to meet the actual leaf yield

production in Muga culture. A total of 5000 nos. of

improved variety of Som (P. bombycina) seedlings

were supplied to the farmers of Sivasagar (3000 nos.)

and Dibrugarh (2000 nos.) districts for gap filling in

their existing farms.

Field demonstration programmes covering 119

nos youth, by which the rural youth inspire with the

Muga culture. Three numbers of training were

conducted covering 150 youths in each district on pre

cocoon sector for sensitization and motivation of

younger generation towards Muga culture A total of

5000 nos. of improved variety of Som (P. bombycina)

seedlings were supplied to the farmers of Sivasagar

(3000 nos.) and Dibrugarh (2000 nos.) districts for gap

filling in their existing farms. A total 7023 nos. of

improved disease free Muga layings were supplied to

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72 nos. of beneficiaries for conducting Muga seed crop

rearing to fulfill their seed crop. At the end of the year

79 nos. of cocoon production per Dfl observed against

49 nos. of cocoon production in benchmark Similarly,

income generation increased up to 52000.00 per year by

per Muga rearing crop against Rs 48000.00

(Benchmark) through integrated technology of Muga

rearing.

Storing some data in form of paper, compact

disk, hard drives, etc. is prevalent and is the most

common form. However, the data stored in these forms

are prone to damage and have a short life. In contrary,

DNA being the transmission device in living organism

guarantees data storage and retrieval even after

thousand years. This property of DNA can be exploited

to store synthetic data in the living organisms and

which can be retrieved even after thousand years.

A number of research groups have

demonstrated synthetic data storage by devising a

encryption keys which would translate 4 bits of data to

dinucleotide in the polynucleotide change. They did so

by inserting 4 different cassettes (representing 4 reading

frames- a way how DNA is read) into B. subtilis (type

of a bacteria) and thereby retrieving the data using

multiple sequence alignment techniques(a type of

method used for aligning DNA sequences). They

showed that even after mutations (change which occurs

randomly in DNA sequence), about 99% of the data can

be retrieved when 4 cassettes are used. They achieved

this without the help of any parity checks or any error

checking mechanisms (Yachie et al., 2007).

More recently, scientists from Harvard

University have been able to encode a short digital

movie into DNA of living bacteria. They used a popular

DNA editing tool called as CRISPR-Cas system to

insert DNA segment encoding the movie in genome of

the bacteria. This research pushes the technical

boundaries enabling capture and stably store digital data

in living cells (Shipman et al., 2017).

References

Yachie N, Sekiyama K, Sugahara J, Ohashi Y, Tomita

M (2007) Alignment based approach for durable

data storage into living organisms. Biotechnology

Progress, 23: 501-505.

Shipman S, Jeff N, Macklis J, George C (2017)

CRISPR-Cas encoding of a digital movie into the

genomes of a population of living bacteria. Nature,

DOI: 10.1038/nature23017.

Bacterial pen drive: New research frontiers in data storage

Barkataki MP*, Jeevan B, Subrahmanyam G, Das S, Das K, Chutia M

Central Muga Eri Research and Training Institute, Central Silk Board, Jorhat, Assam (India)

*Corresponding author email: manashbarkataki@yahoo.co.in

The world will not be destroyed The world will not be destroyed The world will not be destroyed The world will not be destroyed

by those who do evil, but by those by those who do evil, but by those by those who do evil, but by those by those who do evil, but by those

who watch them without doing who watch them without doing who watch them without doing who watch them without doing

anythinganythinganythinganything

― Albert Einstein Albert Einstein Albert Einstein Albert Einstein

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