3.3 Varieties for textile production

For textiles as a main application, it is desirable for the fibres to be fine and limitedly glued together. Some varieties produce finer fibres than others, making them more suitable for use in textiles (Table below). By the time of flowering, the fine bast fibres are largely formed and suitable for harvesting. After flowering, until seed formation, the degree of bonding between fibres increases further, which is undesirable for textile production.

Because the fibre hemp straw needs to be retted in the field for quite some time after harvest (§5.4) before it is stored dry for further processing, it is desirable that the hemp will not be harvested too late in the season. For this reason, varieties that flower early are most suitable;^[1] in the Netherlands and Belgium, the risk of retting failure increases with later harvest time.

It is also useful that not all plots of hemp flower at the same time, so that as many hectares as possible can be harvested with one harvester. For this, staggered flowering times are desirable.

Early flowering also means that the plants are slightly shorter than after late flowering, resulting in a lower yield in tonnes per hectare. Fibre hemp cultivation is a balance between fibre quality, yield, efficiency of harvesting and proper retting before dry storage to further processing.

[1] https://www.hogent.be/sites/hogent/assets/File/Teeltfiche_Cannabisness.pdf

[2] Results of field tests in Bottelare (Belgium), crop year 2022, 400 seeds/m² or 70 kg of seed per ha with 70
kg active N/ha.