Agricultural biomass, also referred to as lignocellulosic are produced in billions of tons around the world every year. There are various types of agricultural biomass across the world that can be a potential candidate as raw material in different appli­cations such as oil palm trunks, bagasse, coconut coir, bamboo and kenaf. Mostly, this biomass is found in the form of residual stalks from crops, leaves, roots, seeds, seed shells, etc. They can be divided into main groups depending on the part of the plant which they are extracted, i. e. bast (stem), leaf, fruit (seed) and straw as shown in Fig. 5.1. The composition of these organic fibres varies from one plant species to another. In addition, the polymer constituent composition in a single plant var­ies among species and even different parts of the same plant. It depends on the plant age, development growth, environment and other condition (Kumar et al.

2008) . The properties of biomass vary considerably depending on the fibre diam­eter, structure, degree of polymerization, crystal structure and source and on the growing conditions.

Since decades ago, biomass raw materials have been historically used for ancient tools, food source, construction materials and textiles and as a source of energy. However, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of plant fibre recently for the development of environmental renewable materials especially as a reinforcing agent in polymeric composite materials in substitution of synthetic fibres like glass fibres. This situation is largely spurred by environmental awareness, ecological consider­ation and technological advances. Figure 5.2 depicted an example of different types of agricultural biomass raw materials that has been used in various applications.

Fig. 5.1 Classification of agricultural biomass

Bamboo

Fig. 5.2 Various types of agricultural biomass