Abstract
Studies were carried out around Murree near Islamabad about decortication, extraction, bleaching, softening and dyeing of fibre from Urtica dioica sp.of Nettle plant, while running retting process in such a manner that sustained yields are obtained without disturbing fibre quality. Three different types oftreatments viz. snow, tap water and effective microorganisms (EM) were used for retting. Selected shoots were processed for decortication followed by retting. The snow-treated samples took 40 days, the tap water samplesl0 days and the microbially treated 8 days to be retted. For chemical extraction, boiling in 5% caustic soda solution for 6 hours yielded satisfactory results. On bleaching the fibre, maximum weight loss was observed in snow-retted (9.44%) followed by EM (9.28%) and tap water (8.80%)treatment. Key words: bleaching, decortication, dyeing, extraction, retting, softening, Urtica dioica
