Silk Board campaign to promote Indian silk

The Central Silk Board (CSB) under the textiles ministry, is coming out with a campaign to promote Indian silk in the international markets. The board aims to promote Silk Mark as the national common silk brand for global markets on the lines of Thai silk, Korean silk and Chinese silk.

“We are going ahead with the Silk Mark as the common brand identity for all kinds of silk produced in India. The Silk Mark is a mark of purity and authenticity of Indian silk,” Ishita Roy, member secretary, CSB, said.

The Indian Silk Export Promotion Council (ISEPC) has come forward to support the initiatives of CSB in promoting Indian silk internationally and help in the brand promotion, she told reporters here recently.

During the 12th Five Year Plan period, the CSB aims to undertake several new programmes. The board plans to promote the Silk Mark fusion label using Nano markers into all kinds of silk fabric and sarees. The Geographical Indicator has been given to Kancheepuram and Pochampalli silk sarees, she said.

NS Bisse Gowda, chairperson, Central Silk Board, said the ministry of textiles has accorded approval to the CSB for establishing training infrastructure. A Centre of Excellence in post-cocoon domain will be set up at the Central Silk Technological Research Institute (CSTRI), Bangalore, at a cost of Rs 4.77 crore for conducting industry-aligned modern courses for better employment.

The ministry of textiles has also sanctioned a project involving a cost of Rs 39.77 crore for covering 34,533 beneficiaries and industry stakeholders spread across more than 20 states in five years under the Integrated Silk Development Scheme, he said.

In the first year of the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-13), the CSB has trained a total of 2,225 beneficiaries in a variety of sericulture — silk-related skills ranging from plantation development, disease management, silkworm seed production, quality cocoon production both for regeneration and for silk reeling, spinning, weaving, processing, design development and a by-product of development activities, Gowda added.

The board has also planned to expand the mulberry cultivation in the country during the 12th Plan period and has proposed to raise an additional area of 59,000 hectares of mulberry. At present, mulberry is cultivated over an area of 181,000 hectares across the country. The raw silk production target is around 32,000 tonnes from 23,060 tonnes in the 11th Plan period. Of this, 5,000 tonnes will be of superior quality of bivoltine raw silk and 6,000 tonnes of improved gradable cross breed mulberry silk (2A/3A Grade), which caters to the need of silk power looms and silk mills.

The target for Vanya silk production is 9,000 tonnes during the 12th Plan period. The employment generation would be around 9.27 million by the terminal year of the plan period, directly and indirectly, Gowda said.

The board has also proposed to develop 100 Bivoltine silk production clusters, which would be linked to the R&D institutes, regional sericulture research stations and research extension centres. The R&D efforts will continue to evolve bivoltine hybrids suitable for tropical conditions and third generation multivoltine cross breeds (3G-ICB) for increasing silk production, he added.