1 Retting of jute for quality fibre: Problems and solutions Rajendra R. Chapke* and U. N. Borkar** *Scientist (Sr. Scale), Agricultural Extension and ** Senior Scientist, Agricultural Engineering, Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibres (CRIJAF), Barrackpore, Kolkata-700 120 Introduction Jute is grown as a rain fed commercial crop in our country. In West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Bihar and few other states it is cultivated extensively and well as a fibre crop. Even in the face of artificial fibres, jute fibre now a days has good world market. From gunny bags to carpets, it is being accepted all over the world due ti non-pollutant and bio-degradable characteristics of the fibre. Quality jute fibres, golden and lustrous, producing fine dress materials and fetching high prices to the farmers provided appropriate market. Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibres (CRIJAF), Barrackpore (West Bengal) played an important role in promoting jute production in India. Different high yielding varieties of jute and improved methods of jute cultivation evolved in this institute have already been accepted by the farmers. Jute cultivation is a labour intensive, which constituted 77.15 per cent cost towards human labour (Chapke et. al., 2006). Retting by traditional means consumes at least 30% of total cost of cultivation of jute. Inadequate retting infrastructure, water and high cost of the labourers for retting process were among the major problems. The traditional method of extraction of fibre from jute plants is triple-disadvantaged in terms of time (2-3 weeks), cost of cultivation and production of poor quality of fibre (Borkar and Das, 2006). It may not be suitable for value-added goods besides, low price fetched by the farmers. Such realization has let to develop mechanical extractor of fibre directly from the green plants followed by improved retting method at CRIJAF. The retting related constraints faced by the farmers in traditional method and details about improved method developed by CRIJAF are focused in this manuscript. Conventional retting method Generally, about 100-120 days of sowing the jute plants are harvested. The plants are stacked in bundles and kept lying in the field for 4-5 days for shedding the leaves. The dropped leaves also act as manure to the field itself. Then the bundles of jute plants