Kudumbashree State Mission has signed an MoU with the National Institute for Inter-disciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST), an affiliate of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) , for setting up bio-extraction plants for production of pineapple leaf fibre and banana fibre.
The project is expected to benefit over 10,000 Kudumbashree women farmers /farmer groups and farm-based entrepreneurs covered under its Samagra Programme to set up new micro-enterprises / develop value-added products using cost-effective technologies.
A statement from Kudumbashree said that the fibres of banana and pineapple leaf are in good demand and are used in making textile furnishings, handicrafts and handmade paper. Textile grade fibre fetches the highest market value. Currently, the high quality fibres are extracted through tedious manual processes. Machines have been developed for fibre extraction, but the quality of the fibre is poor.
The recently-developed bio-extraction process of CSIR-NIIST is targeted at producing quality fibres from pineapple leaf and banana pseudostem.
The NIIST process involves an anaerobic process mediated through microbial action and is completed in four to six days of soaking in water. During the process, pectin, the intercellular cementing substance present around the fibres, is degraded. This results in the separation of fibres from their embedding. The fibre thus obtained is brilliant white in colour and has no pith residues.
The clean fibres are dried in sunlight to bring down the moisture content to the desirable level. The successful operation of the plants will help the outreach of the fibre extraction technology to rural areas and that can help employment generation and waste agri-resources utilization for value generation, the statement said.
Presently, 3,876 Kudumbashree members are engaged in banana cultivation in 32 panchayats of Thiuruvananthapuram district and 3,740 entrepreneurs in pineapple farming in Ernakulam district.
The MoU was signed by P K Thomas, executive director(in/charge), Kudumbashree and M M Sreekumar, head, business development, NIIST in the presence of M K Muneer, Minister for Panchayats and Social Welfare. Aruna Sundararajan IAS, Executive Vice-Chairman, Kudumbashree; Anwar Sadath MLA; Dr Suresh Das, Director, NIIST; and Dr Ehrlich Desa, co-ordinator, CSIR-800 were also present.