Regional variation in agro-morphological descriptors of Sesbania bispinosa (Jacq.) W. Wight

The effect of regional diversity on 12 agro-morphological descriptors of Sesbania bispinosa (Jacq.) W. Wight was studied. The mean sum of square varied significantly for six of these traits viz., plant height, branch number/plant, pod number/plant, pod length, seed number/pod and seed width. Among the ten regions, plants grown from seeds of Tangail, Chuadanga and Sirajganj districts of Bangladesh performed better in terms of plant height, number of branches/plant, number of pods/plant, pod length, number of seeds/pod and seed width. In principal component analysis, first six principal components (PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5 and PC6) showed Eigen value >1 and accounted for 85.6% of the total variance. In cluster analysis based on the studied agro-morphological descriptors, the cluster 1 consists of three regions (Chuadanga, Tangail and Jhinaidah), cluster 2 of six regions (Khulna, Mymensingh, Rangpur, Sunamganj, Gaibandha and Faridpur) and cluster 3 of only one district (Sirajganj). Considering these multivariate analyses, three different morphotypes of S. bispinosa could be identified from different locations.

Potassium hydroxide pulping of four non-woods

Four non-woods such as, dhaincha (Sesbania bispinosa), jute stick (Corchorus capsularis), wheat straw (Triticum aestivum) and corn stalks (Zea mays) were cooked by potassium hydroxide (KOH) at the optimum conditions of soda pulping. Dhaincha, wheat straw and corn stalks were delignified to kappa number 19.4, 13.6 and 19, respectively, while jute stick was not delignified sufficiently (kappa number 32.5). All these four raw materials maintained good yield in KOH process. Dhaincha produced the highest pulp yield (50.5%) and wheat straw had the lowest pulp yield (44.7). All pulps were bleached by D0EpD1 bleaching sequences in identical bleaching conditions. Final pulp brightness reached to above 80% ISO except jute stick pulp. Jute stick pulp reached to 74.9% brightness only after the consumption of 30 kg ClO2/ ton of pulp. The overall bleaching yields were 92.6%, 88.4%, 90.1 and 90.8% for dhaincha, jute stick, wheat straw and corn stalks pulps, respectively. The oSR of these four non-wood bleached pulps was above 20, consequently improved papermaking in the unrefined state. Beating rapidly increased papermaking properties, as for example, the tensile index of dhaincha pulps increased from 49 N.m/g in the unrefined pulp to 90 N.m/g in the beaten 50 oSR. It can be seen that KOH is a good substitute to soda process for non-wood.Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res.53(1), 1-6, 2018