detailed answer if possible How does failure in exporting si

detailed answer if possible

How does failure in exporting silkworm culture to North America tells us about manipulating life forms?

Solution

Siericulture Failure in North America:

Sericulture practice is also been attempted in the North America, but it is largely unsuccessful. In 1619 King james I introduced silk-growing to the Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia of American colonies.

In 1831 J.H. Cobb published a manual on sericulture. This book clearly explains the effort to establish silk culture on a firm basis in the United States. This book states silk culture is most profitable investment, At that time the silk culture was known as the “Mormus multicaulis craze.” Due to this craze thousands of individuals purchased mulberry plants and planted large number of areas. But after a few years, many failures and great disappointments caused so complete a revulsion of feeling that silk culture was practically abandoned all through the States.

In 1869, Professor L. Trouvelot, an American naturalist, brought eggs of the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar (L.), from France to Massachusetts.

Trouvelot had hoped to produce a commercial source of silk by developing a hardy race of silk-producing insects, crossing the gypsy moth with the silkworm moth, in order to control wilt disease (or flancheria) then causing severe problems in some silkworm industries.

During the course of his experiments, some of the caterpillars escaped from his home and became like pests after several years greatly expanded in Boston area and become one of North America’s most serious forest pests, defoliating large areas of canopy every year.

Due to these earlier failures at sericulture in the United States, several more attempts at sericulture were made in California from the 1860’s through the early 1900’s. In North America most sericulture attempts failed and sericulture never became permanently established in the state.

So the North America industries began to look for substitutes, which led to the use of synthetics such as nylon.