Pretreatment of jute and banana fibre-its effect on blended yarn and fabric

Jute, a lignocellulosic bast fibre, is mainly utilized for making packaging materials. Whereas, banana fibres are extracted from the sheath of the banana trunk which is underutilized and used for making ropes for domestic purposes. Jute and banana fibres, both grey as well as bleached, have been blended in different proportions like 75:25, 50:50, and 25:75 to produce 8lb yarn. The tenacity of jute/banana blended yarn produced from bleached fibres is much higher than that produced from grey fibres irrespective of blend ratio. Union fabrics have been produced using cotton yarns as warp and jute/banana blended yarn as weft.