Impacts of Environmental Variations on Quality and Chemical Contents of Oriental Tobacco

Summary Basma tobaccos, in addition to Izmir and Samsun type tobaccos, are the most important high-quality oriental tobacco types grown in Turkey. This research was carried out to determine the effects of a variety of environmental conditions, in four locations on different altitudes on the yield as well as on nicotine, sugar and phenolic substances content. The plant material of the study included 21 Basma lines, which were selected according to their morphological differences and from genotypes separated by DNA fingerprint analysis, and four standard cultivars/lines (checks). The quality grade index of the genotypes was determined by the American grading method and chemical analyses were carried out using a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. All the parameters investigated indicated that genotypes were significantly affected by the variation in environmental conditions. Organoleptic observations showed that the quality grade index of genotypes ranged from 24.17 to 100%, and the ERB-7, ERB-13, ERB-15, ERB-19 and ERB-38 lines had the best quality. Nicotine contents of tobacco lines were between 0.31 and 3.15% dry matter (DM). Glucose, fructose and their sum (reducing sugar) contents of genotypes ranged from 1.16 to 8.88% DM, from 2.60 to 8.66% DM and from 4.44 to 15.03% DM, respectively. The ERB-21 and ERB-30 lines are noteworthy tobacco types in terms of reducing sugar contents. The values of chlorogenic acid, one of the phenolic compounds, ranged from 40.67 to 1119.76 ppm, the values of rutin from 121.05 to 1021.53 ppm, and the sum of these two phenolic compounds was from 174.94 ppm to 2019.41 ppm. The effect of variations in the environment on the quality of Oriental tobacco can be clearly explained by the variations in the parameters.