By ICA Bremen

According to members of ITMF (International Textile Manufacturers Federation), stickiness of raw cotton is an increasing problem for the cotton processing industry.

The most important and problematic cause of stickiness has been due to sugars from insect secretions, as insect honeydew remains in the material from fibers in the field to the textile processes.

Various measuring techniques can be used to estimate a possible contamination of fibers by honeydew however, it has been difficult to harmonize such measuring results.

ITMF appointed ICCTM (its International Cotton Committee on Testing Methods) with the task of checking the reliability and comparability of the existing testing methods and then harmonising the interpretation of results.

They plan to test measuring techniques using a set of several cottons distributed over a range of stickiness, in order to match results between techniques.

Jointly lead by CIRAD, FIBRE and ICA Bremen, and supported by the Bremer Baumwollboerse and Otto Stadtlander GmbH, the first Stickiness Round Trial was conducted in September-October 2017 with 35 participating laboratories from 17 countries. A second Round trial has started in November with results due for mid-January 2018.

The aim is that manufacturers and users of stickiness measuring techniques adapt their technologies and operating methods so that the correlations between instruments of the same technique and between techniques improve overtime. The Round Trial will be conducted periodically to measure this progress.