Tobacco Asia

Volume 20, Number 3

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50 tobaccoasia / Issue 3, 2016 July / August --Pack the harvested leaves uniformly in racks or boxes. --Remove the sand that is so prevalent on lower-stalk leaves. This is one of the most serious problems with lower-stalk tobacco. The content of valueless sand sometimes runs as high as one- sixth of the weight of tobacco. Sand removal will definitely increase the quality of tobacco and in- crease the value of the lower-stalk leaves. --Provide enough ventilation in the curing barn to remove 20% to 30% of the moisture in the leaves by the time the tobacco yellows. The tobacco should be thoroughly wilted on the lower tiers or racks when it is yellow enough to increase the temperature for leaf drying. What not to do On the other hand, some factors can be expected to contribute to producing lower leaves with poor marketability, they said: Growth that produces big rank tobacco that shades the lower leaves, particularly where the crop is grown with excess nitrogen. Excessive rates of nitrogen will make this problem worse. Excess shading from the upper leaves will cause the lower leaves to be thin, immature, and low in oil content. Coupled with adequate rainfall, ex- cess nitrogen causes leaves to be thin bodied even though they may appear to be high yielders. Crops grown under high moisture conditions produce lower leaves which are normally about 90% water compared to upper stalk leaves being about 80% water -- because of the high water con- tent of lower stalk leaves, they are much more dif- ficult to cure. Mechanical harvest sometimes injures the leaves which are then very subject to the entry of soil bacteria that promotes soft rot, a real problem on lowerstalk leaf. Leaf diseases such as blue mold, target spot and fleck also affect this question. N.C. Extension economist Blake Brown sug- gested in March that if a farmer knocked off the bottom four leaves, he can expert his overall yield to decline by 10%, with all the yield decline com- ing out of X and P grades. An initial yield of 2,500 lb/acre would then decline to 2,250 lb/acre average yield after four leaf removal. "It costs $20/acre to remove the bottom four leaves with a mechanical harvester," he said. "Under this scenario, harvest costs would go down about $100/acre. The weighted average price would have to be $2.09/lb to give the same profit/acre as if there were no leaf removal and a weighted average price of $1.91." How burley compares The situation is a little different for American burley. The market actually wants more lower- stalk burley leaves than it is currently getting. Called flyings, they are in short supply on the current market, partly because it is difficult to produce a true flying. "We are encouraging growers to separate true flyings from cutters if they can," said Don Fowl- kes, agronomist for the Burley Stabilization Cor- poration in Springfield, Tn. "But farmers usually end up with a bottom grade that is a mixture of flyings and cutters." Stalk position grades above the flyings and cut- ters level need to be medium to heavy bodied, not thin, he said, and have desirable color. Here are some ways to improve your chances of producing this style of burley: --Choose varieties that cure well on your farm. --Plant in well-drained, fertile deep soils that are not deeply sloped, and fertilize and lime ac- cording to soil test results. --Take out the tops of the plants in a timely manner, and use sucker control chemicals as di- rected. --Timely harvesting. --Space sticks properly and manage the curing environment. --Separate your cured leaf by grades in a way to get the maximum value of your leaf from all stalk positions. "In broad terms, the upstalk burley tobacco our customers want is best described as being me- dium to heavy bodied with a tannish-red to red color line," said Fowlkes. "Not tobacco that is thin and bright (buff, light tan, K color lines), but also not tobacco that is excessively dark or black." A worker on the farm of a Piedmont N.C. flue-cured grower loads leaf he has just stripped from the bottom of the stalk into a wagon for transport to the curing barns.

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