Tobacco

Harvesting And Storage

Symptoms of Maturity Methods of Harvesting

Symptoms of maturity

Tobacco is grown for the production of quality leaves which largely depends upon the stage of the leaf at which they are harvested.
The sign of maturity and method of harvesting differ from type to type of tobacco.

However, the sign of maturity, in general, may be mentioned as

Change in colour of leaves from normal green to yellowish,
Thickening of leaves due to more starch accumulation in them,
Accumulation of gummy substances on them
Flowering of plants
Brittleness of the leaves, etc. In flue- cured Virginia tobacco, nitrogenous constituents except alkaloids and water soluble acidity decreased and total sugars increased with reduction of chlorophyll content of leaves at maturity.
The harvesting based on visible symptoms may be erroneous therefore, an objective test paper ( a modified starch Iodide paper) has been developed by Sastry et.al. in 1969 to determine the correct stage of maturity.
When a drop of the leaf juice is placed on the strip of the moistened list paper, the paper turns green, colourless or retains its original blue colour depending upon stage as immature, mature or over mature respectively.
Thus the leaves possessing all above signs are the matured ones which may be harvested but all of them do not mature at one time because of which the method of harvesting differs from type to type according to their prerequisite for quality.

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Methods Of Harvesting

In general, there are two methods of harvesting tobacco
1. Priming
2. Stalk cut method.

Priming

Priminig in Brazil

In case of priming the leaves are harvested as and when they are fully developed and matured.
Priming is supposed to be the best method of harvesting as every leaf gets sufficient time and nutrients for its full development but if the plants are cut the younger leaves get lesser time to grow and as a result they remain underdeveloped and immatured which ultimately affect the quality.

Thus for the production of quality leaves priming is more appropriate method of harvesting, though it is more time consuming and expensive.

Stalk cut method

In case of stalk cut the plants consisting of all the leaves intact are cut from close to the ground.
It is essential to see that the maximum number of leaves are matured so that the quality is assured.
The leaves are not separated until 3-4 days.
Usually following method of harvesting is adopted for different types of tobaccos.

Harvesting method of tobacco based on different types

Finished products	Method of harvesting
Cigarette & cigar (wrapper)	Priming
Cigar (Binder & filler), Cheroot, Chewing, Bidi and Hookah	Stalk cut method

Bidi tobacco is harvested by one of the following methods

Leaf-wise method:

Only matured leaves showing full pledge development are picked and placed on the ground face down.

Whole plant harvest:

Whole plant is cut at bottom when almost all the leaves are matured and kept inverted at the same place for drying.

Gugro method:

Normally harvesting is done 3-4 weeks after topping but it again depends upon the type of finished products.

Type of tobacco and time of harvesting after topping

Finished products	Harvesting Time in weeks after topping
Cigarette, Cigar (Wrapper)	3-4
Cigar, Cheroot	4-5
Chewing, Snuff, Bidi & Hookah	3-7

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Telangana

Tobacco

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamil Nadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

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