Conventional breeding or improved rearing practices alone are inadequate to overcome the daunting problems of producing International grade Indian silk through development of productive mulberry varieties and bivoltine silkworm strains.

In this scenario, it was decided to take advantage and harness the benefits of emerging applications of molecular biology and genetic engineering to address various problems that are defying the traditional approaches.

Accordingly, the Central Silk Board (CSB) established Seribiotechnology Research Laboratory (SBRL) in collaboration with the World Bank under the National Sericulture Project in 1993.