Degumming of Ramie: Challenge to the Queen of Fibres

Ramie is considered as a valuable textile fibre and is known from ancient times. It is considered as the queen of all fibres due to its lustre as well as high tenacity, enhanced strength and good microbial resistivity. The fibre is extracted from the stem of the plant. It is an herbaceous perennial growing plant and is one of the oldest vegetable fibres that have been used for thousands of years. The raw ramie fibres obtained by decortications consists of long fibres in which they are tightly cemented together by gum. The raw ramie fibre contains high proportion (25–30%) of colloidal pectic gummy substances. It is apparent that removal of gum from decorticated ramie is necessary to unveil its unique properties and make it suitable for textile purpose. The cost of extraction and degumming is the major disadvantage of ramie fibre. The process of removal of gum requires chemical, microbial or rather enzymatic treatment which is difficult to perform in farmers’ level. Literature scan showed that there is hardly any standard method of degumming. Moreover, no standard method has been found full proof for extraction of textile grade ramie fibre. Therefore, an integrated methodology which include all the above mentioned conventional methods and non-conventional biotechnological technologies have been evaluanted to degum raw ramie fibres to obtain the textile grade ramie fibre.