Selection of parents from multivoltine silkworm (Bombyx mor; L.) germplasm through principal component analysis

Abstract

There are about 21 characters which contribute to silk yield in silkworm, Bombyx mori L., it is more challenging to the breeders to put together all the desired characters in a single variety/race. Hence, it is essential to eliminate certain environmentally sensitive variables before deciding to select the desirable traits for improvement. In statistical practices, the method of principal component analysis is used to find the linear combinations with large variance. Since there is very limited work available on this aspect in silkworm, B. mori, the present investigation was undertaken to study the principal component analysis for 13 economically important characters in 63 multivoltine silkworm accessions.