Flax and Linseed - Industrial Crops: Breeding for BioEnergy and Bioproducts - page 250

Table 11.8 Moisture, germinability, and varietal purity standards for flax and linseed in the
Czech Republic
Species and category Moisture (%) Germinability (%) Varietal purity (%)

Flax
SE

13 92 99

E 13 92 99

C 13 92 99

Linseed
SE 13 85 99

E 13 85 99

C 13 85 99

Based on data from Ref. [ 151 ]

Market Challenges/Barriers to Commercialization/
Opportunities

The current situation is not favorable for flax but more favorable for linseed. There
is a continuous decrease in flax areas all over the world during the last several years
including in traditional western European countries like France, Belgium, and the
Netherlands. In these three countries, flax areas have been decreasing since 2006 [ 4 ,
5 ]. On the opposite side, in Egypt there was a small and insignificant increase in flax
areas. There were accurate reports that China in 2006 had a confirmed flax area
about 130,000 ha, but only production from 78,000 ha was processed. These data
are related to the planted areas where they were collected. Area harvested therefore
excludes planted areas which were damaged or destroyed due to outside unfavor-
able factors [ 157 ].
The world flax areas total approximately 400,000 ha which about 25 % are
located in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Fiber production of western
European countries represents approximately 60 % of the world market. Based on
these statistical data, it is obvious that world long fiber production is mainly
concentrated in western European countries between the Escaut and Seine
rivers [ 4 ].
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, flax production areas in EU countries
reached 50,000-80,000 ha. It decreased to 44,000 ha in 1991/1992 during the peak
of the flax crisis. Because of the new endowment support from the EU, flax areas
stabilized and the interest in growing flax has increased. Flax areas increased and
reached more than 100,000 ha in 1995. However the main reason of this unexpected
increase was the speculative flax growing in untraditional countries - those that do
not grow flax regularly but did so to receive subsidies. The financial support was
provided without any view to the following processing and utilization. Flax-
growing areas and their development during last 10 years are presented in
Table 11.9 .
Since 2000, the new rules for providing subsidies have been adopted, and a lot of
untraditional countries (e.g., Great Britain, Spain, Portugal) lost their interest in