Broodlac Quality Assessment and Forecasting of Crawler Emergence in Indian Lac Insect Kerria Lacca

Assessment of quality and freshness of broodlac produced by the Indian lac insect Kerria lacca (Kerr) is an important parameter in its pricing. The present study provides an assessment of broodlac quality with 25, 50, 75 and 100% of lac encrustation harvested from summer (baisakhi), rainy (katki) on palas, winter (aghani) on ber, and summer season (jethwi) on kusum. The curve fitting model based on the rate of weight reduction can be used for prediction of freshness. Among the four lac crops, maximum rate of reduction was observed with summer kusmi (jethwi) and rangeeni (baisakhi) crops, and a good quality of broodlac was observed with katki crop on palas. Crawler emergence, stages of yellow spots and number of days for actual crawler emergence varied in different seasons. The present study differentiates the embryonic development into six stages with yellow spots through microscopic images. This reveals that the stage 1 coincides with earlier defined stage 2 and 3, and stage 2, 3, 4 and 5 are of stages 4, 5, 6 and 7 and 8, respectively.