Polygalacturonase is the key component in enzymatic retting of flax

Seven commercial enzyme mixtures were tested for their ability to perform retting of flax (i.e. to separate flax fibers by partly removal of middle lamella) and were assayed for hydrolysis of xylan, cellulose and four kinds of pectin. The only activity that showed correlation to the ability to perform retting was the degradation of low esterfied pectin. A purified Aspergillus niger polygalacturonase was also shown to be able to perform retting. From this data it is hypothesized that degradation of the smooth regions (i.e. non-methylated polygalacturonase) in the middle lamella pectin is the most important step in enzymatic retting.