Six years ago Dr Jolapuram Umamaheswari walked away from her career as a scientist in Singapore.<\/b><\/p>\n
“When I came back to India, I was jobless but I wanted to be my own boss,” she says.<\/p>\n
After some research she hit on silk farming, or sericulture. It involves feeding mulberry leaves to silkworms, harvesting their cocoons and extracting the silk fibres.<\/p>\n
“Silk farming sits at a rare intersection of biology, precision, and business. It didn’t feel like I was leaving science, it felt like I was applying it differently,” she says.<\/p>\n
However, raising silkworms on her farm in the eastern state of Andhra Pradesh proved to be a challenge.<\/p>\n
“The early days were not easy. There were disease outbreaks, inconsistent yields, and the steep learning curve that comes with managing living systems,” she remembers. <\/p>\n
Her scientific background helped to keep her going.<\/p>\n
“Over time, small improvements in hygiene, feeding practices, and environmental control began to compound into better survival rates and higher-quality cocoons.”<\/p>\n
The work paid off, today Umamaheswari produces 10 crops of raw silk a year, with the growth cycle of each batch of silkworms taking 25 to 30 days.<\/p>\n
She makes around $1,000 (\u00a3760) a month.<\/p>\n
“The result is like a steady, almost salary-like income. That’s what makes sericulture unique, If managed well, it gives you regular returns, not just seasonal income,” Umamaheswari says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years ago Dr Jolapuram Umamaheswari walked away from her career as a scientist in Singapore. “When I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-914787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116458260242090707","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}