Methods that have been developed for cotton fiber analysis offer possibilities to develop standards for flax fibers, which are needed to promote a new industry. Fineness is an important property that is related to strength. Because of the nature of bast fiber development, fibers are contained within bundles of diverse widths, giving broad distributions of widths and making analyses for precise widths difficult and nebulous. Image analysis was used to develop width categories that allowed these statistics to be compared with micronaire, and some agreement occurred between the frequency in finest category (10 to 30μm) and micronaire values using a modified (5.0 g cut to 2.5 cm lengths) procedure. Enzyme retting produced fibers lighter in color than dew- retted samples based on CIELAB measurements, and other color characteristics varied with samples. Results suggest that use of enzymes for retting could be used to modify fiber properties and possibly tailor fibers with more precise methods, thus providing diverse fibers for various applications.
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