Pakistan to export pants made of ‘bhang’

A group of scientists working at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, has successfully extracted hemp thread from indigenous cannabis and processed it with cotton to make ‘hemp jeans’.

Department of Fibre and Textile Technology Chairperson Dr Asad Farooq told a private media outlet that hemp fabric is a sustainable material. It is made of fibres of a very high-yielding crop in the cannabis sativa plant family, he added.

“We have signed an MoU with a US-based company and will soon begin mass production,” said Dr Farooq in conversation with Samaa. According to the chairperson, the cannabis pants will be exported to the US and Europe because these markets are replacing cotton with sustainable fibre.

The fibres are extracted from the plant by a process called retting. In the next stage, impurities are removed and then it is converted into yarn through chemical treatment.

The treated soft fabric is then blended with cotton. We used a ratio of 20:80 of hemp and cotton, said Dr Farooq, adding that at present, hemp costs more than cotton but the price will gradually decrease with an increase in production.