Frugal Innovation and Patent Analysis in Sericulture: Lessons for Sustainable Rural Bioeconomy Systems
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Sericulture sustains rural livelihoods in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it provides income for women, elderly workers, and smallholder households. Yet this sector faces a critical technological divide: traditional reeling methods remain labor-intensive and uncompetitive, while industrial innovations advance along trajectories that are poorly suited to low-resource contexts. This article presents a patent landscape of silk-reeling technologies retrieved from Espacenet and PATENTSCOPE (2000–2024), comprising 212 unique records. Patents were evaluated against six criteria: resource efficiency, knowledge accessibility, durability and reparability, context adaptability, equity and inclusion, and by-product valorization. This review reveals a strong industrial bias, with most patents emphasizing energy-intensive steaming, mechanized feeding, and digital control, while only a small fraction addresses rural conditions or social inclusion. Current innovations therefore tend to marginalize traditional producers from emerging bio-based value chains. This study contributes to discussions on how technological design can support rural sericulture, highlighting the need for resource-efficient, modular, and socially inclusive solutions. Future research should extend patent analysis to mulberry cultivation, silkworm breeding, and by-product recovery to fully integrate sericulture into the circular bioeconomy.
Source: Sustainability
DOI: 10.3390/su172210026
Institution: Instituto Politécnico Nacional
Language: English
Subfield: Business and International Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
Awards: G255493499, G5462131008
OpenAlex ID: W4416093132