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Even though most information is digitized today, paper as a printing substrate is still essential. The quality of the paper depends on whether it has the properties required for its intended use, which will fundamentally rely on the raw materials used. Nowadays, the production of paper and board is increasingly focused on alternative non-wood raw materials. In this context, the main objective of this research is to improve the quality of prints on laboratory-made papers with supplementary barley pulp by coating the surface of the papers with titanium dioxide coating. Since laboratory-made papers were not subjected to the bleaching process and no additional surface treatments were used, TiO2-based coating proved to be one of the ways to improve the quality of the prints on such substrates. In this study, it was concluded that TiO2-based coating did not affect the colorimetric values of the black prints to the extent that it affected the colorimetric values of the magenta prints. However, density of printed inks was increased up to 14% for prints on laboratory-made papers with higher amount of barley pulp and TiO2-based coating in two layers.

Today, the paper industry is faced with a global deficiency of raw wood materials, so alternative sources of virgin cellulose fibres are playing an important role in paper production. Agricultural countries produce large quantities of crop farming by-products such as straw, which is an interesting alternative raw material for cellulose fibres. Straw is used in many industries because of its numerous advantages: animal food industry, biofuel industry, construction industry and as artistic material. The potential use of straw production residues is of great importance in paper and printing industry. The focus of this research is on triticale straw, which was used as a non-wood fibre source for paper production. Namely, triticale straw was converted into semi-chemical pulp and was combined with recycled wood pulp in order to produce alternative laboratory papers. The usability of this kind of laboratory papers in printing industry was analysed based on line reproduction quality. This research evaluated and analysed line reproduction quality based on four line attributes: width, blurriness and raggedness. The results of this research proved that triticale pulp in laboratory papers has equal influence on line printing quality as the recycled wood pulp.