Morphological and chemical composition of pith and fibers from Mexican sugarcane bagasse

This paper tries to enlarge existing knowledge on the morphology and chemical composition of Mexican sugarcane bagasse carrying out a morphological and chemical analysis of the main fractions, fiber bundles and pith, consisting of vessels and parenchyma. The cell dimensions of the two fractions were determined as well as their chemical composition. Morphology as well as chemical composition of the two fractions are different. Average length of fibers was higher than 1 mm and the ratio fiber length: fiber diameter was the highest of all cell types investigated in this paper. Fibers had a high cell wall thickness which contributes to the stability of these tissue elements. On the other hand, the parenchyma cells were very short with a fairly high diameter and a thin cell wall. Such structure has a negative impact on the papermaking properties of bagasse. Chemical analysis of the two fractions revealed that ash content and hot water extractives of the pith fraction is much higher than for the fiber bundles. © Springer-Verlag 2001