COCOONS

The cocoon is made of a thread of raw silk from 300 to about 900 meters (1,000 to 3,000 feet) long. The fibers are very fine and lustrous, about 10 micrometers (1/2,500th of an inch) in diameter. About 2,000 to 3,000 cocoons are required to make a pound of silk (about 0.4 kg). At least 70 million pounds of raw silk are produced each year, requiring nearly 10 billion pounds of cocoons.
More than 90 percent of silkworm cocoon are cultivated to produced in white color. But now some special silkworm species are raised to produce cocoon in yellow, pink and blue colors, not dyed one

Demineralizing has the potential to be used in the silk sector enabling wet reeling of Wild Silk moth cocoons by removing the mineral layer present in these cocoons. This technique is not like degumming where the gum of the fibroin fibres is removed what would lead to a tangled cocoon.^[1] With "demineralizing" the gum and structure of the cocoon is kept intact enabling the cocoons to be wet reeled.^[2] This could allow a new silk industry in areas which have not the conditions or infrastructure for raising the domesticated silk worm Bombyx mori, possibly generating a revolutionary new income stream and alleviating poverty^[3]