Fibre
Pineapple leaves yield a strong, white, silky fibre which was extracted by Filipinos before 1591. Certain cultivars are grown especially for fibre production and their young fruits are removed to give the plant maximum vitality. The 'Perolera' is an ideal cultivar for fibre extraction because its leaves are long, wide and rigid. Chinese people in Kwantgung Province and on the island of Hainan weave the fibre into coarse textiles resembling grass cloth. It was long ago used for thread in Malacca and Borneo. In India, the thread is prized by shoemakers and it was formerly used in the Celebes. In West Africa, it has been used for stringing jewels and also made into capes and caps worn by tribal chiefs. The people of Guam hand-twist the fibre for making fine casting nets. They also employ the fibre for wrapping or sewing cigars. Pina cloth made on the island of Panay in the Philippines and in Taiwan is highly esteemed. In Taiwan, they also make a coarse cloth for farmers' underwear.
The outer, long leaves are preferred for fibre. In the manual process, they are first decorticated by beating and rasping and stripping, and then left to ret in water to which chemicals may be added to accelerate the activity of the microorganisms which digest the unwanted tissue and separate the fibres. Retting time has been reduced from 5 days to 26 hours. The retted material is washed clean, dried in the sun and combed. In mechanical processing, the same machine can be used that extracts the fibre from sisal. Estimating 22 leaves/kg, 22,000 leaves would constitute one tonne and would yield 22-27 kg of fibre.
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