Forecasting Area, Production and Productivity of Mulberry Silk in India

The silk trade has a very small role in global market but it contributes substantially to Indian economy and employment generation. Using time series data on mulberry silk production parameters as available in technical reports of Central Silk Board, Govt. of India for the period 1971-72 to 2014-15, the study attempted to forecast the future silk production inclination trend in India. The trend analysis shows that the series under study follows cubic polynomial for all three parameters. The highest growth rate was recorded for mulberry raw silk production (5.48 %) followed by mulberry raw silk productivity (3.72 %) and mulberry plantation area (1.70 %). Forecasting of area, production and productivity of silk were estimated using Box-Jenkins ARIMA models for the period under study. Based on the model identification and diagnostic analysis, ARIMA (0, 2, 2), ARIMA (0, 2, 1) and ARIMA (0, 1, 0) were found best fitted models for area, production and productivity. Data for the period 2013-14 to 2014-15 are taken for model validation whereas forecast was made for the year 2015-16 and 2020-21 which shows increasing trend to take annual production to 29000 metric tons mulberry raw silk in 2020 with estimated productivity of 120 kg-1ha inspite of slow growth in mulberry plantation area.