The quality of jute fibre is judged by its suitability for the production of various types of yarn and its behaviour in the manufacturing process. The fibre which spins into the finest yarn is considered to be of very good quality.
 
Jute fibre is marketed in bundles of fibre hanks. A fibre hank is composed of about 10-15 fibre reeds obtained from 10-15 plants. Each fibre reed is composed of thousands of fibre strands made of ultimate fibres with lignin and pectic substances, the cementing materials. Commercially fibre quality is assessed by taking a hank out of a lot, spreading the individual reeds on the ground and then assessing the different characteristics by `look & touch' method.

The different characteristics of the fibre which are usually taken into consideration for the assessment of quality usually include root content, colour, lustre, strength, defects etc. They are described below.

These are hardy incompletely decomposed basal or root areas of the fibre. It occurs more in white jute than in tossa jute. For processing in the factories and before export, these, constituting about 12.5 to 39.0 cm, are cut away and separately sold at a much cheaper price.