Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is an important commercial crop that is cultivated for its leaves, which contain nicotine and other phytochemicals. It is native to South America but is now widely cultivated globally. Tobacco is used to manufacture cigarettes and other smoked, chewed, and sniffed products. India is one of the largest producers and exporters of tobacco. Breeding objectives for tobacco include increasing yield, improving leaf quality, reducing harmful substances like nicotine and tar, and developing biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Common curing methods include air curing, flue curing, fire curing, and sun curing which impact the chemical composition and sensory qualities of the cured leaf.

1. Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Solanales
Family: Solanaceae
Genus: Nicotiana
Species: N. tabacum
Binomial name
Nicotiana tabacum L.
Tobacco
2n=2x=48
Origin: America

2. Introduction
 Tobacco is a leading commercial crop valued for
its leaf containing several important phyto-chemicals
including nicotine.
Conventionally, tobacco is used in the
manufacture of cigarettes, bidis, scented chewing
mixtures, cigars, cheroots, zarda, hookah, hookah
tobacco paste, snuff, gutka, quiwam etc.
Tobacco is used as a psychoactive drug, narcotic,
pain killer and pesticide.

4. In India, tobacco is an important commercial crop
fetching more than Rs. 4,400 crores of foreign exchange
and generates over Rs 14,000 crores excise revenue to the
exchequer, besides giving direct or indirect livelihood to
nearly 34 million people.
Indian tobacco has an edge over the leading tobacco
producing countries in terms of availability of different
styles produced with relatively low production costs.
 Some of the positive and significant features of Indian
tobacco are the lower levels of heavy metals, Tobacco
Specific Nitrosamines (TSNAs) and pesticide residues
compared to other tobacco producing countries.

5. Tobacco as a model
plant
•Sexual/asexual
propagation
•Easy manual
hybridization
•Autogamous species
with a relatively short
cycle (9-100days)
•Wide variability and
•produce a large
number of seeds per
plant.

6. Origin and distribution
Tobacco originates from South America.
The botanical genus Nicotiana of Solanacea family contains
over Sixty four Species, of which only two are cultivated-
extensively i.e., Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica.
The word tobacco is generally used for referring to produce
of tabacum spices. In India, tabacum covers the largest area
and rustica plays a relatively minor role.
Tabacum varieties have been developed mainly for
Cigarette, Cigar, Cheroot, Bidi, Hookah, Chewing and Snuff.
On the contrary, rustica varieties are used only for hookah,
chewing and Snuff.

9. Nicotiana species (Solanaceae) are widely distributed,
mainly in the Americas and Australia.
Nicotiana africana is the only species indigenous to
Africa.

10. N. tabacum is an allotetraploid, 2n=4x=48 chromosomes
and was the result of a crossing event between the species
N. sylvestris (2n=24) and N. tomentosiformis (2n=24),
followed by chromosome duplication.
India occupies 2nd place in tobacco production (750 M kg)
after China (2350 M kg) and 2nd in Exports (260 M kg) after
Brazil (730 M kg).
The bulk of Indian tobacco comes mainly from Andhra
Pradesh and Gujrat. Andhra Pradesh and Gujrat are famous
for Cigarette and Bidi tobacco, respectively.
West Bengal, one of the important producers of Chewing
and Hookah tobacco.

11. Tobacco production

12. Nicotiana glauca is a species of wild tobacco known by the
common name tree tobacco and its leaves and stems are
neither pubescent nor sticky like Nicotiana tabacum.

13. Types of Tobacco based on curing
Curing is just a method of preparing the leaf for further
processing, or for immediate use, usually by using a
procedure which minimizes or eliminates certain inherent
negative qualities.
1. Air curing
2. Flue curing
3. Fire curing
4. Sun curing
5. Fermentation by pressure- Perique
6. Fermentation by bulking - Cigar tobacco.

14. 1. Air curing -
 Curing by allowing the leaves to dry by exposure to open air.
 This process can also include using fans to force air movement to accelerate the
loss of moisture.
 Dark air cured (DAC) - used primarily for dark Burley
 Light Air-Cured (LAC) - Burley and Maryland tobacco types

15. 2. Flue curing
Curing by exposure to indirect heat, created by moving hot air, smoke or steam
through a flue or pipe, and allowing the heat to radiate to the enclosure it’s housed
within.
The higher heat causes a more rapid drying effect, and is the traditional method
for curing Virginia or Bright leaf, which gets its yellow color from the heat exposure.
Flue cured tobacco generally has more sugar, less oil and a lower nicotine
content.

16. Curing Broadleaf Tobacco in a Ventilated Barn

18. 3. Fire curing
Equivalent of barbecuing.
With this method, the leaf is exposed to open fires (smoldering rather than
blazing) that give off smoke.
In some cases, the amount of smoke is fairly moderate.
Dark fired Kentucky (a form of Burley) has a modest smokiness that adds a
woodsy bite.
Latakia is also a fire cured tobacco, but with a far more pronounced smoke
flavor and aroma due to the intensity of the fumes and aromatic quality of the
wood used.

19. Barbecuing

20. 4. Sun curing
Used mostly for Oriental tobacco or Terkish tobacco
Oriental tobaccos tend to be rather average in nicotine,
but tend toward slightly acidic to somewhat alkaline due to
a relatively low sugar content.

21. 5. Fermentation by pressure
Eg. Perique - the most strongly flavored of all tobaccos.
 The leaves are packed in barrels and subjected to pressure from a
screwjack which bursts the cells and the resulting juices then ferment
and are reintroduced to the leaf at a later time.
 A year’s worth of fermentation helps develop deeper flavor and a bit
more sweetness than the base leaf exhibited.

22. 6. Fermentation by bulking - Cigar tobacco
Fermentation produced by piling bales of tobacco (called
bulks) until the pressure creates the onset of fermentation
and then the temperature is closely monitored, as the
temperature has a major influence on the flavor and the
color of the finished leaf.
USDA certified organic tobacco - ORGANIC GREEN RIVER
ONE SUCKER TOBACCO (GROS)
Shade tobacco: Connecticut in USA is known as "Tobacco
Valley“
Thuoc lao: Thuoc lao is a nicotine-rich (although not as
strong as mapacho) type of tobacco grown exclusively
in Vietnam and is often smoked by Vietnamese rice farmers.

23. Shade tobacco: Connecticut in USA is known as "Tobacco Valley“

24. Types of tobacco cultivated in India
Type Cultivated States
1. FCV Tobacco Andhra Pradesh & Karnataka
2. Bidi Tobacco Gujarat & Karnataka
3. Cigar & Cheroot Tamil Nadu & West Bengal
4. Hookah Tobacco Assam, West Bengal, Bihar & UP
5. Chewing & Snuff Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam & U.P.
6. Natu, Burley, Lanka Andhra Pradesh & HDBRG
HDBRG (Harvel de Baixo Rio Grande) tobacco, one of the premium
burley varieties, is grown in black soils of Guntur and Prakasam
districts.

25. Bright leaf tobacco
leaf ready for
harvest. When it turns
yellow-green the sugar content
is at its peak, and it will cure to a
deep golden color with mild
taste.

26. Breeding objectives
1.High yielding: Improving tobacco plant for higher leaf
biomass.
2.Superior leaf quality: Desirable leaf quality suitable for its
conventional uses of smoking, chewing and snuffing.
3.Improving the input use efficiency (N, K & water)
4.Development of biotic and abiotic stress tolerant
varieties: Incorporating resistance to TMV(Tobacco mosaic
virus), Damping-off, Black shank, Brown spot, Hollow stalk,
Fusarium wilt.

27. 5. Reduction of harmful substances
Smoke tar (nicotine free total particulate matter), carbon
monoxide and tobacco specific nitrosamines (TSNA) are the
chemical substances responsible for tobacco related health
problems.
In view of this, reducing these substances in the cultivated
varieties is essential for the production of safer tobacco.
Reduction of TSNA (<1 ppm) in burley tobacco and smoke tar
(<12 mg/cigarette) in FCV tobacco are important breeding
objectives.
Research at CTRI and its research stations resulted in the
development of low tar advanced FCV breeding lines viz., JS-117,
JS-78 and JS-62 and low TSNA burley line, 324C.
 Low tar line, JS-117 and low tar hybrid, NLSH-1 are in the pre-
release evaluation stage.

28. 6. Production of higher levels of phytochemicals
Valuable phytochemicals produced in tobacco, their products and uses.

29. 7. Uniform ripening:
Uniformly ripe tobacco leaf is desirable for the curing
process.
8. Mechanization of tobacco cultivation
Mechanization of tobacco production including
•seedling production,
•planting,
•Stitching,
•unloading,
•field operations,
•barn technology,
•seed processing and
•delivery for manpower saving

32. De-suckering

33. Breeding methods
The magnitude of heterosis in burley tobacco is higher
than that in flue-cured tobacco.
Therefore, flue-cured tobacco breeding programmes are
geared towards the production of pure lines rather than
hybrids.
Development of Hybrid tobaccos
•Research efforts resulted in the development and release of
two Bidi hybrids, GTH-1 and MR GTH-1 (Mosaic resistance) and
a chewing hybrid, Kamatchi.
•In addition, two FCV tobacco hybrids (CH1 and CH-3) were
identified for released.

34. Problems encountered in flue-cured tobacco breeding
Tobacco has a narrow genetic base, which restricts genetic advance.
Nicotine and total nitrogen concentrations of the leaf are negatively
correlated to yield. It is speculated that there will be a market demand
for the tobacco leaf with a low nicotine concentration. Breeding
programmes may take advantage of this naturally occurring
phenomenon to satisfy the speculative market demand for leaf with
low nicotine.
Sustained anti-tobacco campaign - health hazards.
 Increase in cost of production due to escalation in input costs and
labour wages, lack of energy and labour saving devices in tobacco
cultivation,
Issue of deforestation due to fire-wood used in tobacco curing and
shortage of coal for curing tobacco, vagaries of weather,
Lack of organized marketing system for non-FCV tobacco similar to
the system in vogue for FCV tobacco etc.

35. Anti-tobacco campaign

37. •Bio-engineered products: Tobacco plants are being
used as hosts for bioengineering processes to
produce new antibiotics, vaccines, cancer
treatments, other medicines, blood substitutes and
biodegradable plastics and industrial enzymes and
solvents.
•Development of genetically engineered tobacco
plants that could clean up contaminated areas
around weapons factories and ammunitions dumps
just by being grown in the contaminated dirt.
Biotechnology in Tobacco

38. Schematic diagram of
different approaches of
phytoremediation

39. Combining new plant breeding techniques
(CRISPR/CAS9) to turn tobacco leaves into organic factories
producing beneficial molecules for vaccines, antibodies
and cosmetic products, instead of making cigarettes.
This is the objective of the 7.2 million euro EU
project Newcotiana, for reviving the traditional cultivation
of tobacco, with the purpose of creating new sustainable
applications which are good for health.
Manufacturing of small molecules such as carotenoids,
playing a protective role for the eye and pyridinic alkaloids
useful in the palliative treatment of multiple
sclerosis and Alzheimer.