We newly developed a “Disinfectant Cleaner for Sericulture (DCS)”, using sodium hypochlorite (NaClO), sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃) and sodium tetrapolyphosphate (Na₆P₄O₁₃) of food additive grades. The DCS solution was composed of 500-fold dilution of NaClO (containing 12% more of free chlorine of the undiluted solution), 0.5% (w/v) Na₂CO₃ and 0.2% (w/v) Na₆P₄O₁₃. No corrosion of steel blades was observed when small pieces of the blades were dipped in the DCS solution for 24h. On the contrary, all the blades were heavily rusted when dipped in a control solution of NaClO containing 286ppm of free chlorine. We checked the effectiveness of the DCS solution against the silkworm pathogens including Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus, BmNPV (1.03×10⁹OBs/ml), Bombyx mori cypovirus, BmCPV (1.19×10⁹OBs/ml), Aspergillus flavus S-85 (1.12×10⁸conidia/ml), Beauveria bassiana (1.18×10⁸ conidia/ml), Nomuraea rileyi (1.01×10⁸conidia/ml), Metarhizium anisopliae (1.06×10⁸conidia/ml), Serratia marcescens (1.10×10⁹CFU/ml), and Nosema bombycis (8.80×10⁸spores/ml), and confirmed that these pathogens were disinfected completely within 5-15min with the DCS treatment.

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