Republic of the Philippines Sorsogon State College Castilla Campus Mayon, Castilla, Sorsogon A.

Y: 2013 2014

Crop Production Name: Abrigo, Charmaine F. Alcantara, Angelica M. Year/Course: BSAD III Instructor: Mr. Andrew F. Detera

_________________________________________________________ IIntroduction

In this research, we would like to share the importance of the abaca in our country. It would help our abaca farmer and it also educate the people the importance of abaca. Abaca, the countrys premier fiber and known worldwide as Manila hemp, has come a long way from its humble beginning as raw material for our ancestors coarse and stiff clothing as well as footwear. While abaca is still being used for these purposes, its application has expanded to sophisticated industrial uses. It is now a preferred material in the production of pulp for specialty papers like tea bags, meat/sausage casings, cigarette paper, filter papers, currency notes, stencil papers and a host of non-woven product applications.

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Objectives 1. To educate the people the importance of the abaca. 2. To know the history of abaca. 3. To familiarize the different products of abaca. 4. To know were the abaca came from.

III- Discussion Abaca, binomial name Musa textiles, is a species of banana native to the Philippines, grown as a commercial crop in the Philippines, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. The plant is of great economic importance, being harvested for its fiber, once generally called Manila hemp, extracted from the trunk or pseudo stem. On average, the plant grows about 12 feet (4 meters) tall. The botanical name of abaca is Musa Textilis, a treelike herb which is of the same genus as the common banana which it closely resembles. It is indigenous to the Philippines. The abaca plant to the untrained eye, can easily be mistaken for the banana plant - without the fruit. The abaca plant is smaller than the banana although some varieties under favorable conditions can even be taller or at least equal the height of the banana plant. Abaca, however differs from the banana through the following characteristics:

Abaca leaves are narrower with pointed ends and the genral coloration of the leaves are glossy dark green about 8 feet in length, 12 feet in width. Whereas banana plants have leaves that are broader and the color is somewhat lighter green. The hearts, trunks and fruits of the banana plant are relatively bigger compared with that of the abaca plant. The abaca fruit is smaller, neither so palatable as that of the banana. The stem of the abaca grows to a height of 9 to 12 feet; 3 inches in thickness When mature, the abaca plant consists of about 12 to 30 stalks radiating from a central root system. Each of these stalks is about 12 to 20 feet high. The stalk is the source of fibers. The abaca plant is easy to grow. It propagates itself through suckering, or the growing of shoots from the roots.

The abaca plant grows to about 10 to 15 feet high. Initially it requires 2 to 4 years for the baca plant to ripen. However, the abaca can grow shoots that develop roots and become ready for harvest in 4 to 8 months after the initial crop. When all the leaves have been formed from the stem, flower buds develop, at which time the plant has reached maturity and is then ready for harvest.

Abaca is also popularly known worldwide as "Manila Hemp". However it is not related to the true hemp.The name "hemp" is from the old English word "hanf" which came into use in the Middle English bt 1000 AD and belongs to the plant cannabis sativa. However, the abaca is not the common hemp plant from cannabis sativa. "Hemp" has come to be used as a generic term for all long fibers. The word "hemp" is generic for plants that contain a fiber called "bast". The abaca is a hard fiber (referring to its stiffness) and is entirely different from the true hemp which is a soft fiber and is the product of cannabis sativa. The fiber was originally used for making twines and ropes; now most abaca is pulped and used in a variety of specialized paper products including tea bags, filter paper and banknotes. It is classified as a hard fiber, along with coir, henequen and sisal. The leaves grow from the trunk of the plant, the bases of the leaves form a sheath (covering) around the trunk; there are approximately 25 of these, with 5 cm in diameter and from 12 to 25 leaves with overlapping petioles, covering the stalk to form a shrub, "false trunk" or pseudo stem about 30 to 40 cm in diameter. They grow in succession, with the oldest growing from the bottom of the trunk and successively younger ones from the top. The sheaths contain the valuable fiber. The coarse fibers range from 5 to 11 feet (1.5 to 3.5 meters) in length. They are composed primarily of cellulose, lignin, and pectin. The abaca plant belongs to the banana family, Musaceae; it resembles the closely related wild seeded bananas, Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. Its scientific name is Musa textilis. Within the genus Musa, it is placed in section Callimusa (now including the former section Australimusa), members of which have a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 20.

The plant is normally grown in welldrained loamy soil, using pieces of mature root planted at the start of the rainy season. Growers harvest abac fields every three to eight months after an initial growth period of 1225 months and a total lifespan of about 10 years. The slopes of volcanoes provide a preferred growing environment. Harvest generally includes having several operations concerning the leaf sheaths:

tuxying (separation of primary and secondary sheath) stripping (getting the fibers) drying (usually following tradition of sun-drying).

In Costa Rica, more modern harvest and drying techniques are being developed to accommodate the very high yields obtained there. The abaca plant is indigenous to the Philippines whose warm, wet climate and volcanic soils are particularly suited to its cultivation. It has been grown in the Philippines for centuries, long before the Spanish occupation. When Magellan and his companions arrived in Cebu in 1521, they noticed that the natives were wearing clothes made from the fiber of abaca plant, noting further that the weaving of the fiber was already widespread in the island.

Abaca cordage it was, however, only much later that the commercial or export importance of abaca was discovered. According to historical accounts, an American lieutenant of the U.S. Navy brought a sample of abaca fiber to the United States in 1820. This gave the initial impetus to Philippine abaca trade with the United States that five years later, the first exportation of abaca was made. Since then, abaca became well known as one of the strongest materials for marine cordage because of its superior tensile strength and proven durability under water. With the onset of the 20th century, abaca fiber has become the premier export commodity of the Philippines.

Because of its importance, the United States Department of Agriculture sent its top agricultural and fiber experts to the Philippines to provide impetus to the production of the fiber for their consumption.

Many Americans were encouraged to establish plantations in the Philippines such that in 1909, Davao was chosen as the most suitable area for abaca. At the close of the First World War, the Japanese also took keen interest in abaca for its navy, also choosing Davao as the plantation site. They improved the method of production introduced by the Americans. This put the industry to a higher level of efficiency.

The Philippines has a monopoly in the production of abaca fiber in the 1920s. Since this period, wars were won by countries with superior navies and considering that cordage was vital to naval operation, the Philippine monopoly in abaca production alarmed the Americans.

In 1921, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to cultivate abaca in Central America, particularly in Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras using the most outstanding Philippine abaca varieties. This was to be the beginning of the end of our abaca monopoly. It was after World War II that a Japanese national, Furukawa, one of the pre-war abaca plantation owners in Davao, started field-testing and successfully cultivating abaca in Ecuador. Today, Ecuador is the only other country commercially producing abaca in the world.

The advent of oil-based synthetic fibers in the mid-1950s, which rapidly replaced the traditional usage of natural fibers, displaced abaca as prime cordage material and precipitated its almost total collapse. Thus, the Philippine abaca industry suffered a slump as prices hit rock bottom that several farmers eventually phased out their plantations.

Significant breakthroughs in technology and processes took place in the 60s that brought about development of new uses for abaca, particularly in the use of pulp for the production of specialty paper products.

In 1968, the Canlubang Pulp Manufacturing Company, the first local company to embark on the development of the technology for producing pulp using abaca, made its first exportation.

As demand for abaca for pulp use increased, Filipino investors became interested in domestically producing abaca pulp. Other investors followed suit with most of them tied-up with foreign companies, which, due to strict anti-pollution laws in their respective countries, transferred their pulp operations in the Philippines.

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Insights/ Learning

Abaca is very important in our society because it helps us in improving our economic value. Every single strand of abaca is important in making good products like bags, slippers and clothes that can be export to the other countries. Abaca is very much capable materials that can be last a long time. It can never be easily to be We just need to improve our abaca farming so that it will not disappear in future that can be cause of abaca failure in the Philippines. Be proud on of our own products.

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References

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f "abaca." Encyclopdia Britannica. 22 January 2007 Jump up^ Wong, C.; Kiew, R.; Argent, G.; Set, O.; Lee, S.K. & Gan, Y.Y. (2002). "Assessment of the Validity of the Sections in Musa (Musaceae) using ALFP". Annals of Botany 90 (2): 231 238.doi:10.1093/aob/mcf170. Jump up^ Ploetz, R.C.; Kepler, A.K.; Daniells, J. & Nelson, S.C. (2007). "Banana and Plantain: An Overview with Emphasis on Pacific Island Cultivars". In Elevitch, C.R. Species Profiles for Pacific Island Agroforestry. Hlualoa, Hawai'i: Permanent Agriculture Resources (PAR). Retrieved 2013-01-10. ^ Jump up to:a b Plant Molecular Biology and Plant Virology National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, 2012 ^ Jump up to:a b Borneman Jr., John A. (1997). "abaca". In Johnston, Bernard. Collier's Encyclopedia. I A to Ameland (First ed.). New York, NY: P.F. Collier. p. 4. Jump up^ "lupis", "sinamay" in Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, third edition