Mulberry Silk is also known as cultivated silk and bombvx silk but mulberry silk is the most commonly used term. Mulberry silk comes from the silkworm, Bombyxmori L moth, which solely feeds on the leaves of mulberry plant. The moth has one job to do and that is to lay eggs.After it lays about 500 eggs, its job is finished and it dies. The tiny pinpoint size eggs are kept at 65 degree Fahrenheit with the temperature slowly and care fully raised to 75 degree Fahrenheit to hatch the eggs.
The tiny silkworm that are born are fed an exclusive diet of mulberry leaves 24 hrs a day, 7days a week (mulberry leaves are the only food the bombvxmori moth eats). After about a month of the constant gorging on the mulberry leaves, the silkworms will have increased their weight about 10,000 times and will have built up enough energy to start spinning their cocoon.
The cocoons are then kept in a warm place for several days. Great care is taken to ensure the silkworm do not hatch into moths because that would damage the cocoon and break the silk filament it has woven.To harvest the silk from the cocoons, they are place in water to soften the filament. The softened filament is then unwound from the cocoon. One filament can be up to 1600 yards long. It takes 4-8 of the silk filament woven together to create one mulberry silk thread. The resulting mulberry silk thread is the strongest natural fiber in the world, making it incredibly durable.
In India, the major mulberry silk producing states are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir which together accounts for 92% of country's total mulberry raw silk production.
