Global Market for Silk Farmers through Lipstick & Nail Polish

To strengthen the hands of the Silk Farmers and doubling the Farmers Income as per the Hon`ble Prime Minister Mission, the Karnataka Chief Minister Shri H D Kumaraswamy suggested the alternate sources of Income from the same silk by manufacturing and exporting the Lipstick and Nail Polish in the Global Market.

Realising the global demand, especially in the production of women’s consumables like nail polish, lipstick and silk colors, the Chief Minister has proposed to formulate a strategy to exploit the market potential. Moving away from making just silk yarns for fabric, Kumaraswamy has proposed to tap the global market for the byproducts to ensure considerable income to silk farmers.

“There is worldwide demand for silk byproducts such as nail polish, lipstick and silk colors. An amount of Rs 2 crore will be provided to formulate a strategy to exploit this market,” Kumaraswamy said. The announcement. has brought cheers to the sericulture farming community of Ramanagara, Channapattana, Kolar, and Chikkaballapur districts, who have been hit by falling prices of silk cocoons.

This apart, the Chief Minister has proposed to revive the Karnataka State Silk Research and Development Institute that was set up in the 1970s at Talaghattapura on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

Research Programmes are drawn through periodical interaction with the Department of Sericulture, Government of Karnataka (DOSK) and other major end users. They are organized under the identified thrust areas which are periodically reprioritized based on requirement and urgency. The problems thus identified are assigned to individual scientists who take up the projects and sub-projects under the time bound programmes as Project Leaders and Project Investigators respectively, the research programmes are coordinated by the Project Monitoring & Technical Co-operation Cell (PMTC).

The research projects are taken up for front-line research, on-farm research, field trials and demonstration trials either through the main station or through the sub-stations and related units of DOSK. The recommendations thus emanated are released as technologies for popularization and/or are commercialized for exploitation. They are also subjected to fine-tuning through further research. Development related activities are taken up mainly in coordination with the Department of Sericulture, Govt. of Karnataka, while related activities have taken up by the Extension and Training Division.

Further dissemination of technologies is taken up through the implementation of comprehensive extension activities covering the village and farmer adoptions. A large number of extension literature in Kannada and English covering the Institute developed technologies on various aspects of sericulture have been brought out. Scientists regularly participate in workshops, field days, seminars etc., arranged by the Department of Sericulture (DOSK) addressing different sectors of the industry

Human Research and Development taken up by organizing need based training programmes covering the staff of the Department of Sericulture and students at various levels of the Colleges and Universities. The scientists also serve as resource persons and examiners for the Training schools, Institutions, Colleges and Universities. The Institute also has Ph.D. programme with its scientists as guides and examiners.