WOOD FIBRE EVALUATION OF MORINGA OLEIFERA (LAM) AS RAW MATERIAL FOR PULP AND PAPER PRODUCTION

Wood quality studies were carried out on the Moringa oleifera collected from Lafia, Nasarawa State, Nigeria to ascertain their suitability for pulp and paper making. Ten (10) sample trees collected from the 3year old Moringa plantation, at the Faculty of Agriculture (Shabu-Lafia Campus), Nasarawa State University Keffi. Sample discs were collected from 5%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 85%, of the whole length of each of the harvested stands (axial positions), while radial samples were collected from the core wood, middle wood, outer wood and bark. Physical properties: growth ring, ring width and fibre morphology such as fibre length, fibre diameter, lumen width, cell wall thickness, Runkel ratio, flexibility ratio and felting coefficient were studied on axial and radial directions on the ten samples. Five slivers were obtained randomly from each of the 4 radial and 5 axial sampled discs replicated on ten (10) randomly selected Moringa trees, totaling 1000 fibres used for this study. The wood splints of 1 x 3cm were obtained from the wood sample with the aid of a knife and placed inside test tubes and macerated with an equal volume (1:1) of 10% glacial acetic acid and 30% Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) at 100±2OC and boiled until soft and bleached white as adopted by Franklin, 1945. The study was laid out in a 5 x 4 x 10 factorial experiment in a completely randomized design (CRD). Pith diameter was 9.29±4.05 mm, it increased significantly from base to top. Bark thickness was 4.75±1.67mm. Significance between-tree variation was observed for ring width with a mean of 5.27±0.68 mm, however, ring width consistently increased along the stem axis. The results of the fibre morphological characteristics showed that the fibre length was 2.28±0.49 mm, 13.77±3.13 μm lumen width, 19.54±1.95 μm fibre diameter while the cell wall thickness was 2.37±2.00μm. Fibre length, lumen width and cell wall thickness varied significantly along the stem axis at (p<0.05). Moringa oleifera fibre characteristics as reported in this study showed that, they are well suited for tissue, corrugating medium, newsprint, and writing paper. It is therefore necessary for researchers to focus more on some agricultural crop alternatives as well as lesser known wood species such as Moringa oleifera, by exploring their pulping potentials and thus prevents overdependence on already depleting scarce forest resources.