Bast fibres abaca

Nature in its abundance offers us a lot of material that can be called fibrous fibres are found in plant leaves, fraits, seed covers and stalk. Fibres from these plants can be considered to be totally renewable and biodegradable. Bast fibres are soft, woody fibres obtained from stems of dicotyledonous plants (flowering plants with net-veined leaves). Such fibres, usually characterized by fineness and flexibility, are also known as soft fibres, distinguishing them from the coarser, less flexible fibres of the leaf, or hard , fibre group. This chapter will discuss bast fibres from flax, hemp, jute, ramie, kenaf and abaca. 

Bast fibres (flax, hemp, jute, ramie, kenaf, abaca) 37... 

Leaf fibres are usually obtained from the leaves or leaf stalks of monocotyledonous plants. Leaf fibres are often known as hard fibres because they are less flexible and coarser than bast fibre. Sisal, abaca and henequen are most important fibres of this group. These are part of the plant s transportation system the cells are small and are bound together by pectins. They cannot be isolated by retting but are extracted by scraping pulp from the fibres by a knife, either manually or mechanically, in a technical process called decortication. 

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