Abstract

 

The bast fibers of Linum usitatissimum, flax, have been used for rope, yarn, and fabric since as early as 36,000 BC (CLEC). The complicated system of processing Linum usitatissimum has been done since then, and the most complex link in the chain of processing happens during retting when the fibers are freed from the outer layer of the stalk via the help of enzymes that break down pectin and other structural elements. Traditional retting is done by dew retting or submerged water retting while the textiles industry has sped these methods up by using crimped enzyme retting where the flax is pounded to slightly physically break up the flax, sprayed with water and lab produced enzymes (Akin et al. 2001). These lab producing enzymes are predominantly composed of pectinase (Sharma and Van Sumere 1992) which is an enzyme found in decomposing tomato and orange scraps (Sandhya and Kurup).

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This experiment aims to see if tomato and orange peel scraps could aid in the retting of flax by  1) speeding up traditional retting (dew and water retting) that is done by home or small scale processors in a way that does not require commercial enzymes which are not available to the average consumer, and 2) being used in a crimped enzyme retting system that mimics industrial retting to see if these food scraps could be potentially used at an industrial scale.

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