Table 6 shows strength properties of the handsheet produced from DPM and WS as compared with those made from J. procera. Overall strength properties of the specimens made from the two raw materials are signifi- cantly lower than those made of J. procera pulp. Generally, the differences between the properties of handsheet made from DPM and WS were significant. Wheat straw handsheets had higher strength properties than those made from DPM except for tear index where the differences between them were not significant. The tensile indices recorded in the current work were slightly lower than those of the values for date palm rachis soda-AQ pulps (61–70 Nm g1 ) reported by Khristova et al. [23] and Abdel-Aal [5]. The tensile strength of the samples increased with increasing cellulose content of the raw materials [14,27] also found that, increasing of the cellulose content would increase the strength of the paper. The tearing index of the specimens made from DPM and WS were comparable to those reported for date palm rachis [7]. Table 6 also shows the average values of the air porosity and brightness of the samples made from the three raw materials. As can be seen, the highest brightness value and air porosity were determined for the samples made from WS, while DPM resulted dark samples. The pulp brightness ranged from 14.1% to 37.3% for the samples. Brightness values of the specimens were comparable to those values reported by Madakadze et al. [6] for kraft pulps from switch grass (Panicum virgatum L.) and elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum Schum). The values of air porosity of the paper had a wide range from 7.3 s for DPM to 67 s for WS suggesting that the porosity of the sheets made from WS was very high while of DPM sheet had very low porosity. Increasing the porosity of the handsheet made from WS could be attributed to the fine structure of the fibres as compared to that of the other materials. As can be seen from Table 4, WS have the lowest values of fibre length (1.02 mm), fibre width (11 l), cell wall thickness (1.2 l) and lumen diameter (8.6 l). The brightness value recorded for WS (37%) was high than those reported by Khristova et al. [23]. Such results are similar to those determined on a previous work [32].