Agriculture and Environment: Tobacco

Better Management Practices: Curing Process

Recent surveys of 23 tobacco-growing countries, including Brazil, found that an average of 5.5 kilograms of wood were used to cure 1 kilogram of green tobacco where flue curing is practiced.

The average fuelwood use has fallen steadily over the past decades due to the introduction of more efficient furnaces and improved barn and drying shed designs (ITGA 1997).

Innovations in curing systems & processes
Innovations in the United States have also focused on curing and include the use of insulation and circulating fans to increase the heating efficiency of drying barns. Also new regulations have led to the development of drying systems that control the amounts of tobacco-specific nitrosamines (or TSNAs).

These compounds are a by-product of the drying process and a chemical reaction between nitrogen compounds in combustion and nicotine in the tobacco leaves.

Eliminating TSNAs
The presence of TSNAs is thought be responsible for many of the damaging effects of tobacco on human health. With the retrofitting of drying barns with heat converters or exchangers it is possible to eliminate most detectable TSNAs (PBS 2001).