A bit of botany
Botanically tobacco is of the genus Nicotiana of the family of Solanaceae (nightshades). Potatoes and tomatoes are of the same family. The genus Nicotiana has 70 species but only two of them are important for our purposes, the Nicotiana Tabacumand the Nicotiana Rustica.Both of them were being cultivated in the New World when Columbus made the discoveries with his expedition. However, when people started cultivating tobacco on a large scale, it readily became apparent that most smokers preferred the soft, mild and aromatic Nicotiana Tabacum. The hard, heavier and above all sharp Nicotiana Rustica was, and still is, only cultivated in a few places in the world, such as certain parts of Russia and a few Asian countries, mainly for local consumption. Originally, the tobacco plants only grew in tropical and subtropical areas with a humid climate. Later, tobacco came to be grown in more climatologically moderate zones and on a large scale thanks to crop improvement and better methods of cultivation. Tobacco is cultivated nowadays in practically all countries between the 60o latitude north and the 40o latitude south.
From seed to harvest
The tobacco plant is a perennial. It grows fast, taking only around four to five months from sowing to harvest. In that period the seed grows into a substantial plant which can vary from 75 to 250 centimetres in height. For large scale cultivation and harvesting this difference is too large. Science, however, has succeeded in growing plants which are more or less the same height. These days, on the big tobacco plantations, the plants are around one and a half to two metres. The smallness of the seed belies the size of the plant. A gram of tobacco seed comprises no less than 14,000 seeds. Comparatively little is needed to plant a substantial plantation from these extremely fine granular seeds. Cultivation of healthy crops resistant to external influences, such as fungi, is promoted by careful selection of the seed which consequently makes it fairly costly. Improved species can also be grown in this way. To protect the vulnerable seed as much as possible, the bed in which it is to be sown is sterilised to ensure that it is disease-free. There are different types of seed, each of which produce different types of tobacco plants. Under favourable conditions, the first tobacco plants begin to emerge fairly soon after sowing. The young, tender plants have to be protected from frost and sun by being covered with straw or leaves, or through frosted glass or sheltered in some other way. After six to eight weeks the plants are big enough to be transplanted to the large plantation. The healthy and strong plants are selected and planted at regular intervals. In many countries this is still done by hand, but in the more industrialised countries the planting is done entirely mechanically.
The quality of the tobacco is affected by many factors. First of all the choice of seed is very important, but also the soil, the climate, the geographical location of the plantation and of course care during cultivation have considerable influence on the quality. As the plant grows, pale pink flowers begin to bloom in the top of the plant which have to be nipped out unless the plants are being grown for seed. The tobacco plant has a single stem on which the leaves grow in a spiral. Any shoots are removed, so that all the nutrients end up in the leaves. The less attractive leaves are also removed for this purpose. The leaves can be harvested four to five months after sowing. This is done in various ways. In some parts of the world the entire tobacco plant is cut down- the stem is harvested. Elsewhere only the leaves are plucked - the leaf harvest. As with planting the young plants harvesting is still done in some countries by hand, though in industrialised countries most of the harvesting is done by machine.
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