Application of Marker-Assisted Selection in Silkworm Breeding for Disease Resistance

The development of pathogens that cause silkworm diseases and their outbreak is clearly visible as a result of climate change, particularly in tropical nations like India, where environmental humidity and temperature are frequently favorable for pathogen survival and infection, causing significant financial losses to the silk industry. The main factor in increasing the sustainability of sericulture is illness prevention in silkworms. Use of silkworm breeds or hybrids that are not disease-resistant or tolerant, as well as insufficient disinfection, are the main causes of the occurrence of diseases that cause partial or entire crop loss. Because of the enhanced survival rate, using disease-tolerant/resistant cultivars is the most obvious way to increase productivity in any crop system. The ability to isolate and use genetic resources that are disease-resistant or tolerant from the rich and diverse germplasm collections is made possible by advances in molecular biology. Recent biotechnological technologies have been effectively used to pinpoint several disease-tolerant genes and QTLs. Through marker-assisted selection (MAS), which can hasten the formation of tolerant/resistant silkworm hybrid in the fewest feasible generations with the highest degree of precision, it is possible to pyramid putative tolerance genes into a single genotype.