-

Adequate feeding of silkworm is a very important factor in cocoon production. In addition to feed quantity, the manner of feeding which can preserve the quality of mulberry leaves is also important in silkworm rearing. In order to study the role of feeding frequency on productive and nutritional behavior of commercial silkworm, four treatments namely one, two, three and four times of feeding per day were studied. The results revealed that increasing the frequency of feeding causes enhancement of cocoon shell weight, cocoon weight, shell percentage, amounts of ingestion and digestion, ingestibility and digestibility. But, the efficiency of conversion of ingested and digested food into cocoon shell weight, cocoon weight and shell percentage increased at lower feeding frequencies. The percentage of pupation and larval duration did not indicate any significant difference among treatments. Therefore it was concluded that an decrease in feeding frequency in mass production from 3 to 2 and from 3 to 1, in addition to more ease in work, it is commercially justified too.