Amaducci et al ID #21 2008 International Conference on Flax and Other Bast Plants (ISBN #978-0-9809664-0-4) 104 An Innovative Production System for Hemp Fibre for Textile Destinations: From Laboratory Results to Industrial Validation ID number: 21 Stefano Amaducci Institute of Agronomy and Field Crops / Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, via Emilia Parmense 84, 29100 Piacenza, Italy stefano.amaducci@unicatt.it Jörg Müssig Hochschule Bremen - University of Applied Sciences / BIOMIMETICS / Biological Materials, Neustadtswall 30, 28199 Bremen, Germany jmuessig@bionik.hs-bremen.de Alessandro Zatta, Gianpietro Venturi Department of Agroenvironmental Science and Technologies (DiSTA)/ University of Bologna, Viale Fanin 44, 40127 Bologna, Italy Abstract Various technical bottlenecks limit the production of fibre hemp for textile destinations. The HempSys Project tackled most of the problems hampering the production of hemp fibre for textiles in Europe. An innovative production system was researched and developed in which harvesting is carried out at flowering, the stem cut into two portions of approx. 1 m long which are laid on the field in swaths, stem portions kept parallel. Baling and scutching is thereafter carried out with flax machines. The long fibre bundles obtained after scutching are retted with an innovative controlled microbiological process. Materials and Methods. During the project the effect of agrotechnique and biomass processing on fibre yield and quality was assessed at the level of plot trials and laboratory evaluation. In order to validate results at industrial scale large field trials with three plant populations and two harvesting times were set up in Cadriano (BO). Hemp stems cut at 1 meter length and bundled were scutched in a flax plant in Austria. The long fibre bundles obtained were weighed and quality evaluation was carried out. Results and discussion. Pure fibre content analysed at lab level showed a decrease in fibre content from the lower to the upper portions of the stem (58% of bast fibre was found in the first meter), while stem cross section analysis showed that fibre fineness increased from bottom to top. After industrial scutching on average 77% of the long fibre bundles were extracted from the bottom portion of the stem. Furthermore, fineness analysis showed that fibre from the bottom part was not coarser than that from the top part, and in some cases even finer. Higher fibre yield was obtained at full flowering. Comparing laboratory to industrial result it became evident that scutching was more efficient in the lower part of the stem, in fact the ratio between scutched fibre and bast fibre content was 0.34 in the bottom and 0.15 in the top. Studying the mechanical scutching process and the height distribution of the stem portions fed into the industrial machine a major cause for this result was hypothesised: stem portions shorter than 0.6 m are not held firmly by the scutching line and, therefore, are lost during processing. On average 30% of the plants measured from 1.2 to 1.7 m and their top portion was shorter than 0.6 m. An experiment