Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1543154
54 tobaccoasia Issue 1, 2026 January / February By Allen Liao Upper leaves constitute a vital component of the tobacco plant, accounting for 30%‑45% of the total leaf yield per plant. Boasting inherent advantages such as excellent aroma quality and abun‑ dant aroma volume, they hold a key position in cigarette formulations and playing a decisive role in defining the characteristic style of premium cigarettes. However, for a long time, the relatively low usability of upper leaves in Chinese‑style ciga‑ rettes has been a prominent issue. Common drawbacks include excessively high nicotine content, low sugar levels and sugar‑to‑nicotine ratio, rigid tissue structure, and strong irritation. These limitations severely restrict their proportion in high‑end cigarette blends, resulting in a significant gap compared to the utilization rate of upper leaves in foreign cigarette formulations. This situation not only leads to a waste of tobacco leaf resources but also exacerbates the structural imbalance between the supply and demand of high‑quality leaves, hindering the high‑quality development of the tobacco industry. Against this backdrop, Xuchang Commercial Branch under China National Tobacco Corporation and China Tobacco (Hubei) Industrial Cor‑ poration have respectively broken through the bottleneck in utilizing upper leaves with distinc‑ tive technological pathways, providing crucial support for the transformation and upgrading of the Chinese‑style cigarette industry. One-time harvesting and curing for upper leaves As a major tobacco‑growing region in China, Xuchang (one of the cities of Henan province) pioneered r&d on upper leaves as early as 2008. It successfully overcame the technical challenges of one‑time maturity harvesting and curing, creating the renowned Shang Liu Pian (Upper Six Leaves) tobacco leaf brand within the Chinese tobacco industry. Targeting the core pain points of uneven maturity and difficult curing of upper leaves, Xuchang Commercial Branch broke away from the traditional segmented harvesting model and innovatively adopted the one‑time maturity harvesting and curing technology for the upper 4‑6 leaves. This technology ensures the upper leaves uniformly reach the quality standard of "even maturity and sufficient oil content" by precisely regulating key field management factors such as water and fertilizer supply and topping timing. During the curing stage, optimized tempera‑ Unlocking the Potential of Upper Tobacco Leaves in Chinese-Style Cigarettes New technologies being utilized in China's tobacco fields led to improved upper-leaf quality and higher income for farmers.