Research Article Open Access

Development of Agave Americana Anti- Bacterial Fabric for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Textiles are used in different sectors and various purposes beyond imagination. Medical sector is one of them. An important and emerging part of the textile industry is medical, hygiene and health sector. The medical textile industries have diversified with new materials and innovative designs. Recently, the application of textiles has on track going beyond the usual wound dressings, incontinence pads and plasters etc. Among these vast categories of medical textile products, the hospital textiles play an important role and also expected to fulfill the hygienic, comfort and microbial resistance property requirements. These functional requirements of hospital textiles have led to the innovative use of a variety of natural fibers with enhanced comfort and hygienic properties in the development of new products for medical applications. The Agave Americana plant is one of the very important natural resource which is available in the tropical areas with plenty of hygienic properties. Based on the view, the Americana plant leaves are collected and extracted by mechanical process. After the extraction the fibers are converted into yarn and fabric forms for the different medical end uses. The extraction was done by using the Box and benkhen optimized process conditions. The anti-bacterial property was tested on fabric using standard AATCC 147 qualitative and AATCC 100 quantitative tests against both positive and negative bacteria with 24 and 48 hour time duration. The anti-bacterial property of Agave Americana fabric was also compared with standard antibiotics. The test result shows that the Agave Americana fiber has good antibacterial activity against the gram negative Escheirchia Coli (32mm & 42mm) bacteria than gram positive Staphylococcus aureus (23mm &35mm) bacteria. Agave Americana fiber has showed higher zone of inhibition against standard antibiotics. Based on the results, the developed anti-bacterial Agave Americana fabric will be most suitable for medical and health care applications.

Rajkumar Kandhasamy, Krishnaveni Vasudevan

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