of B. mori (Pereira et al., 2013). Moreover, the species is essentialfor the silk industry, which, in Brazil, operates on small farms withpredominantly family labor (Panucci-Filho et al., 2011).According to Nagaraju (2000), the various breeds and strainsof B. mori present particularities related to their morphologi-cal, developmental, behavioral and biochemical characteristics.Nagaraju adds that this genetic diversity results from geographicalcross-breeding, which is responsible for a variety of quantitativeattributes related to body size, feeding duration, thermal toleranceand resistance to diseases.