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

Mankind has been strongly dependent on plant fibres for all kind of purposes. In earlier days, natural fibres served a crucial role mitigate the everyday needs in a wide range of uses. But in recent years the arrival of synthetic products are dominating over the natural fibre, due to the low cost. But the synthetic fibres are non degradable and causing serious pollution problems. Banana is one of the earliest and important fruit crops cultivated by man in tropical parts of the world. Banana is distributed in more than 120 countries, over an area of 48 lakh hectares, with an annual production of 99.99 million tons in the year 2011 (Indian Horticulture Database, 2011). Banana farming generated huge quantities of biomass all of which goes as waste due to non availability of suitable technology for its commercial utilization. Normally this biomass is used for animal feed and fuel. Among its multi faced uses like therapeutic, alcohol, starch extraction and other innumerable uses, they are the best source of fibre. India has about 8.3 lakh ha under banana cultivation (Indian Horticulture Database, 2011) producing approximately 51.18 million tons of pseudostem waste per year. This can be profitably used for extracting approximately 3.87 million tons of fibre. Apart from being food-fruit crop, banana plant is versatile with respect to its utilities. Banana fibre from pseudostem is said to be superior and in the mid-19th century, there was quite active banana fibre industries in Jamaica. Species such as Musa textalis are well known for their strong fibre qualities. Wild species like Musa balbisiana var. cola, Musa balbisiana var. andamanica existing in Andaman and Nicobar Islands are used for extracting fibre. In the Philippines, it is woven into a thin, transparent fabric called “agna” which is the principle material in some regions for men’s shirts. It is also used for making hand kerchiefs. In Sri Lanka, it is fashioned into soles for expensive shoes and used for floor coverings. Improved processes have made it possible to utilize banana fibre for manufacture of paper, currency, ropes, cordages, gunny bags, handicrafts etc. Starch is manufactured form pseudostem and the juice from the pseudostem can also be used in dyes as it has a property of a permanent stain. Seat pads for benches are made of strips of dried banana pseudostem in Ecuador. Apart from the pseudostem, banana peduncle has also been found to be a good source of cellulose rich fibre. These fibres are used as a composite in polymer matrix [1]. It is estimated that banana peduncle and leaves occupies 20% of the plant total biomass [2]. Even though peduncle is a rich source of cellulose, research reports available on extraction of fibre from peduncle are scanty. This necessitates the research study on evaluation of elite banana cultivars for extraction of fibre form pseudostem and peduncle of few important commercial cultivars. As banana peduncle are dumped on road side or burnt which causes environmental pollution. This will also surely help in solving the environmental problems.