Mulberry being a foliage crop is grown extensively in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, India for feeding of silkworms.  The mulberry gardens in these regions occasionally get contaminated with many kinds of pollutants and problems have cropped up in sericulture due to intoxication of silkworms fed on contaminated mulberry leaves.  Of the different environmental factors, fluoride exerts a profound influence on the growth of the silkworms especially where the fluoride concentrations ranges between 2-25 ppm in ground waters in drought prone areas of India.  Fluoride generally regarded as highly toxic to all organisms. Fluoride ingestion resulted in a significant loss of silkworm body weight and decrease in faecal output which apparently were due to decreased consumption of food. The changes in the nutritional parameters were appeared as a dose and time dependent in both sub lethal and sub-sub lethal doses treated silkworms. However the changes in the sub-sub lethal treated silkworm on 4^th day were less when compared to sub lethal treated silkworms which indicated that the silkworms on prolonged exposure could develop recovery from the toxic effect at lower dose.

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1. Influence of fluoride on cocoon production/ Protein profiles in different improved silkworm varieties, Bombyx mori L.  
2. Fluoride bioaccumulation and electron microscopic study on fluorotic silkworm midgut