Established in 1896 the Scientific Center on Sericulture, Vratsa (SCS) is now the biggest center in Bulgaria conducting various activities for sericulture industry development that is structured with four major departments such as Department of Research, Department of Extension Service, Department of Production and Department of Administration. The Department of Research is composed with 3 laboratories: mulberry selection/agronomic laboratory; silkworm genetics, breeding and egg production laboratory and silkworm rearing technologies/cocoon processing laboratory. Its main activities on research work are related to the genetic research on breeding technology for improvement of new silkworm lines/breeds and hybrids; silkworm egg production technology; silkworm rearing technology; mulberry selection and cultivation; cocoon and silk processing; sericulture economics and management.
The Center maintains more than 140 mulberry varieties and silkworm over 260 strains, which have been collected from internal and external resources and bred for further improvement of their genetic characters. Up to date, 21 original commercial silkworm hybrids were developed by the Station, 12 of which had been genetically screened for field adaptation test and selected as recommendable varieties for commercial cocoon production at the field level. All the relevant research work on various areas of sericulture and other necessary activities such as supply of silkworm eggs/mulberry saplings and training/extension service are implemented by the Sericulture Experiment Station in Vratza in order to support sericulture farmers' cocoon production activities in the country. SCS-Vratza is multi-functioned to run overall integrated activities such as research and development (R & D) activities, production of raw materials such as mulberry saplings and silkworm eggs and market-oriented business activities to successfully develop the sector as an economically viable sericulture industry at the regional level and /or the national level.