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Physical and Chemical Properties of Banana Fibre Extracted from Commercial Banana Cultivars Grown in Tamilnadu State

Preethi P and Balakrishna Murthy G

Banana is one of the important fruit crop cultivated in tropical parts of the world. Banana farming generates huge quantity of biomass all of which goes as waste and the above ground parts like pseudostem and peduncle are the major source of fibre. Banana fibre can be used as raw material for industry for production of range of products like paper, cardboards, tea bags, currency notes and reinforced as polymer composite in high quality dress materials. Fibre from pseudostem and peduncle of four commercial cultivars of Tamil Nadu viz., Grand Naine, Poovan, Monthan and Nendran were extracted using banana fibre extraction machine. The highest pseudostem and peduncle fibre recovery were obtained from Poovan (2.71% and 1.09%, respectively) and the lowest from Grand Naine (1.07% and 0.63%, respectively). Cellulose is the major component of the fibre. The highest cellulose content was recorded in Nendran peduncle fibre (60.27%) followed by Nendran pseudostem fibre (59.23%). The other non- cellulosic substances like hemicellulose, lignin and pectin were high in Monthan pseudostem fibre (15.75, 21.56 and 4.08%, respectively). Mechanical properties like tex and fibre diameter decides the fineness. Fine fibres were obtained from pseudostem of Nendran (24.23 tex and 0.119 mm, respectively). The breaking load, breaking extension and tenacity were found to be good in peduncle fibres of Nendran cultivar (332.33 g, 2.01% and 39.56 g/tex).