Bright Tobacco Research Articles

Elemental and Isotopic Characterization of Tobacco from Umbria.

Umbrian tobacco of the Virginia Bright variety is one of the most appreciated tobaccos in Europe, and one characterized by an excellent yield. In recent years, the Umbria region and local producers have invested in introducing novel practices (for production and processing) focused on environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Due to this, tobacco from Umbria is a leading commodity in the global tobacco industry, and it claims a high economic value. The aim of this study is then to assess if elemental and isotopic compositions can be used to protect the quality and geographical traceability of this particular tobacco. For the first time the characteristic value ranges of the stable isotope ratios of the bio-elements as a whole (δ2H, δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, and δ34S) and of the concentration of 56 macro- and micro-elements are now available, determined in Virginia Bright tobacco produced in two different areas of Italy (Umbria and Veneto), and from other worldwide geographical regions. The ranges of variability of elements and stable isotope ratios had slightly different results, according to the three geographical origins considered. In particular, Umbria samples presented significantly lower content of metals potentially dangerous for human health. The results of this first exploratory work highlight the possibility of characterizing tobacco from Umbria, and suggest widening the scope of the survey throughout Italy and foreign regions, in order to be used to describe the geographical origin of tobacco in general and verify the origin of the products on the market.

Optimization of aqueous aerosol extract (AqE) generation from e-cigarettes and tobacco heating products for in vitro cytotoxicity testing

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and tobacco heating products (THPs) have reduced yields of toxicants and have recently emerged as a potentially safer alternative to combustible cigarettes. To understand if reduced toxicant exposure is associated with reductions in biological responses, there is a need for high-quality pre-clinical in vitro studies.Here, we investigated the cytotoxic response of human umbilical vein endothelial cells to conventional cigarette aqueous aerosol extracts (AqE) and highly concentrated AqEs from e-cigarettes (two generations of atomisers) and THPs (two variants). All AqE samples were generated by a standardized methodology and characterized for nicotine, propylene glycol and vegetable glycerol.The cigarette AqE caused a maximum 100 ± 0.00 % reduction in cell viability at 35 % dose (2.80 puffs) as opposed to 96.63 ± 2.73 % at 50 % (20 puffs) and 99.85 ± 0.23 % at 75 % (30 puffs) for the two THP variants (glo Bright Tobacco, glo Rich Tobacco), and 99.07 ± 1.61 % at the neat ePen2.0 e-cigarette (200 puffs). The AqE of the remaining e-cigarettes either resulted in an incomplete dose-response or did not elicit any response.The methods utilized were suitably sensitive to not only differentiate between cigarette, THP and e-cigarette aerosols but also to distinguish between products within each product category.

Influence of Smoking Puff Parameters and Tobacco Varieties on Free Radicals Yields in Cigarette Mainstream Smoke.

Cigarette smoke is a major exogenous source of free radicals, and the resulting oxidative stress is one of the major causes of smoking-caused diseases. Yet, many of the factors that impact free radical delivery from cigarettes remain unclear. In this study, we machine-smoked cigarettes and measured the levels of gas- and particulate-phase radicals by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy using standardized smoking regimens (International Organization of Standardization (ISO) and Canadian Intense (CI)), puffing parameters, and tobacco blends. Radical delivery per cigarette was significantly greater in both gas (4-fold) and particulate (6-fold) phases when cigarettes were smoked under the CI protocol compared to the ISO protocol. Total puff volume per cigarette was the major factor with radical production being proportional to total volume, regardless of whether volume differences were achieved by changes in individual puff volume or puff frequency. Changing puff shape (bell vs sharp vs square) or puff duration (1-5 s), without changing volume, had no effect on radical yields. Tobacco variety did have a significant impact on free radical production, with gas-phase radicals highest in reconstituted > burley > oriental > bright tobacco and particulate-phase radicals highest in burley > bright > oriental > reconstituted tobacco. Our findings show that modifiable cigarette design features and measurable user smoking behaviors are key factors determining free radical exposure in smokers.

Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities by Richard Follett, et al.

Reviewed by: Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities by Richard Follett, et al. Robert Gudmestad (bio) Plantation Kingdom: The American South and its Global Commodities. By Richard Follett, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 176. $19.95. The American South ascended to amazing heights of economic glory in the first half of the nineteenth century. By any measure, the region produced large quantities of rice, cotton, sugar, and tobacco. Along the way, it created supremely wealthy individuals. Such production, of course, was based upon the exploitation of slave labor and an ability to connect to global markets. By the start of the twentieth century, the South had fallen into “commodity hell” (p. 5). Its enslaved labor was no more, and the global system that southern planters exploited now led to a glut of cheap imports. This collection of essays explores this stunning transformation. An expert in each of the four commodities—Peter Coclanis for rice, Sven Beckert for cotton, Richard Follett for sugar, and Barbara Hahn for tobacco—chart each commodity’s trajectory. The result is an interesting book that serves as a useful encapsulation of the latest scholarship of the southern plantation economy. In some ways, the chapters in this book are distillations of earlier scholarship, [End Page 176] and readers who have read the authors’ monographs will find much that is familiar. What these essays do, though, is to make it easy for readers to line up the commodities against one another and search for points of comparison and difference. For instance, rice is the only foodstuff in the book and the demand for it in the Atlantic World remains opaque. Cotton was the only crop that broke past regional bounds and was one of the earliest globally integrated industries. Sugar needed a fresh infusion of young workers and a federal tariff to survive. Tobacco underwent an early industrialization and probably did not endure as steep a decline as the other commodities. All of the crops depended on the exploitation of enslaved Americans and favorable federal policies. The essays also push past the traditional boundary of 1865. At first, globalization was a blessing, but after the war it became a curse because the American commodities had difficulty competing, particularly when it came to price. American slavery, it is clear after reading these essays, held down the costs of production in the South, but at the human price of long hours and brutal corporal punishment. The four commodities also depended on technological advancement for their success, a point that might intrigue and frustrate readers of this journal. Coclanis brushes past technology that improved antebellum rice production, but then inserts a useful discussion of the technology that helped bring down the U.S. rice industry. He notes that intercontinental steam shipping, the Suez Canal, the trans-oceanic cable, and steel-hulled vessels created conditions where foreign rice could flood the domestic market. Beckert and Follett briefly mention the importance of technology for cotton and rice, but don’t provide a comprehensive discussion of its role in commodity production. Hahn’s incorporation of technology is the most useful in this short book. She argues that the various types of tobacco are a product of technological innovation, and her discussion of bright leaf tobacco is an interesting case in point. Planters used technology to create bright leaf technology, but how they did so is a matter of dispute. Hahn has an interesting discussion of how planters created a myth where a slave fell asleep and allowed the curing fires in a tobacco barn to burn too hot. This story “valorized the plantation past” by replacing the exploitative nature of tobacco production with a vision of happy, contented slaves (p. 115). These thought-provoking essays are a useful starting point for anyone wishing a greater understanding of the South’s four great commodities. They would be appropriate to assign in undergraduate or graduate classes that study southern history or American economic history. [End Page 177] Robert Gudmestad Robert Gudmestad is a professor of history at Colorado State University and the author of Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom (LSU Press...

Race and Class Friction in North Carolina Neighborhoods: How Campaigns for Residential Segregation Law Divided Middling and Elite Whites in Winston-Salem and North Carolina's Countryside, 1912–1915

Race and Class Friction in North Carolina Neighborhoods:How Campaigns for Residential Segregation Law Divided Middling and Elite Whites in Winston-Salem and North Carolina's Countryside, 1912–1915 Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant (bio) In 1913, W. E. B. Du Bois looked back on the deal African Americans had made with white southerners and declared it a mess of pottage. In return for giving up claims to political rights in the South, African Americans were supposed to have been given "educational and economic rights"—that is, schools and jobs. In 1895, Booker T. Washington had brokered this deal, urging white southerners to offer work opportunity to "these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth." But southern whites had not carried out their side of the bargain, Du Bois argued. As it became clear that the schools that educated black children would remain "wretched and inadequate," observers comforted themselves that "at least the economic rights of the Negro are secure." Arguing that not even these were safe, Du Bois pointed to recent developments in North Carolina.1 In North Carolina, as in other parts of the post–Civil War South, determined black farmers had acquired significant amounts of [End Page 531] land.2 African Americans in the Piedmont had opportunities not available in many parts of the South. They earned money for the purchase of farms through skilled jobs producing bright leaf tobacco and through off-farm jobs like stemming in tobacco factories, and they found credit to be at least somewhat available to them.3 "Has this [the success of black farmers] caused any rejoicing in North Carolina?" Du Bois queried: I regret to say it has not. On the contrary, it has led to widespread proposal for the most vital attack on the economic rights of the Negro ever put forward in the United States. Let no one misconceive the significance of this. The Negro was asked to give up his political rights for the sake of advance. He finds that with the giving up of his political rights his educational rights are curtailed, the right to work is increased but inadequately, his right to hold property in cities is being questioned, and now, finally, there is a movement in the South to curtail his right to own agricultural land. This movement has not started with an ignorant agitator of the [Coleman L.] Blease and [James K.] Vardaman and [Benjamin R.] Tillman type. Its sponsor is Clarence Poe, editor of the Progressive Farmer, and a man representing in many ways the best traditions of the South.4 Clarence H. Poe's "vital attack on the economic rights of the Negro" was an attempt to segregate the North Carolina countryside after the model of South Africa, where black people were allowed to own land only in designated areas. Poe led his campaign for rural segregation from his perch as editor of the Progressive Farmer, a farm journal widely read among a group Du Bois described as the South's "most intelligent farmers"—generally, small white farmers with an interest in learning the latest scientific agricultural techniques in order to maximize efficiency. Poe and his readers wanted not a return to slave-run plantations but a new model of smaller farms run by educated, forward-looking farmers. Poe's campaign encouraged moderates on the so-called race question to turn to a program that sharply limited opportunity for African Americans—and led to an upswing in racism—as, according to Du Bois, "a growing mass of white farmers" demanded residential segregation.5 [End Page 532] Just before Poe began his campaign to segregate the countryside, a number of southern cities had started passing ordinances establishing separate residential areas for white and black people. Baltimore's city council was the first to pass such an ordinance, in 1910. Several cities in Virginia—Ashland, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond, and Roanoke—did the same between 1911 and 1913, as did Greenville, South Carolina, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1912. Atlanta passed a residential segregation ordinance in 1913, as did Greensboro, North Carolina...

Plantation Kingdoms: The American South and Its Global Commodities by Richard Follett et al.

Reviewed by: Plantation Kingdoms: The American South and Its Global Commodities by Richard Follett et al. Drew Swanson (bio) Plantation Kingdoms: The American South and Its Global Commodities. By Richard Follett, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 165. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper) Plantation Kingdoms pulls together four prominent agricultural and economic historians—each with significant recent scholarship on a commodity crop—to explore the rise and fall of the southern plantation system. The book evolved from a series of lectures the authors gave in 2012 and 2013 at the University of Sussex, but the talks seem thoroughly revised for print and work well as an edited collection (a rare feat). Each essay explores the history of a different southern commodity, defined by Peter Coclanis as “a class or type of marketable good or service, members of which are generally sold in a rather undifferentiated, interchangeable manner and which at one end of the spectrum possess complete fungibility” (p. 12). This concise collection follows southern plantations on their paths to “commodity hell,” a world of global labor and sales markets where growers have little control over inputs or prices and crops are freely moved to the site of cheapest production (p. 5). Coclanis examines the history of rice culture in coastal South Carolina. He admits that rice lacks the economic and cultural significance in North America that it holds in some other parts of the world but argues that it highlights the networks of global capitalism that came to surround southern commodities. He defines lowcountry rice planters as aggressively capitalist from the early colonial era. Coclanis’s primary historiographical intervention comes in his argument that coastal rice production was in irreversible decline before the Civil War because of escalating competition from Asian producers, countering the traditional narrative that pins the collapse on the Civil War and emancipation. Sven Beckert’s essay on cotton explores the spread of the fiber across the Deep South. He attributes the commodity’s meteoric expansion to a unique set of factors, summarizing that “the United States was the one area in the world in which emptied lands, plentiful bonded labor, and a politically influential planter class existed” (p. 46). [End Page 287] Richard Follett’s account of Louisiana’s sugar culture follows the same arc as that of Caribbean sugar production, if in a more compressed timeframe. Follett pays particular attention to the importance of tariffs in nurturing, protecting, and—when withdrawn in the twentieth century—hastening the decline of southern sugarcane, as well as the postemancipation struggles over labor that plagued the industry. Finally, Barbara Hahn emphasizes the crucial role of various institutions in shaping and sustaining commodity agriculture. Through the history of southern tobacco she explains how tax structures, marketing legislation, curing technologies, and government agencies all created and defined tobacco varieties, such as bright leaf and burley, and made these types seem natural rather than human constructs. Quibbles are few. Although the introduction promises a history of “the real Americans, free and unfree, who transformed the countryside and produced the raw materials from which much of the nation’s wealth derived,” relatively few people appear in the book, at least as individuals (p. 2). A few prominent planters are mentioned, and only the occasional slave (such as Stephen Slade, whom Hahn discusses as an—perhaps apocryphal—“inventor” of bright tobacco); on the whole these are economic histories interested in national or global exchanges, markets, and institutions. This seems a product of the authors’ interests as well as the limited length of the book. All the essays are crisply written, though they vary a great deal in tone and style; each has a distinct authorial voice, which is a good thing at the chapter level, but which also makes for a less-than-seamless whole. In sum, this is an interesting collection with a number of uses. It serves as a good, short, accessible primer on southern plantation agriculture, while at the same time offering a few fresh takes on familiar narratives. It could be particularly useful in courses on southern, agricultural, or economic history. [End Page 288] Drew Swanson DREW SWANSON is an...

When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont by Evan P. Bennett (review)

Reviewed by: When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont by Evan P. Bennett Eldred E. Prince (bio) When Tobacco Was King: Families, Farm Labor, and Federal Policy in the Piedmont. By Evan P. Bennett. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. Pp. x, 152. $74.95 cloth) Evan Bennett has given us a well-written and thoroughly researched essay on bright leaf tobacco culture in the Old Belt of North Carolina and Virginia since the Civil War. The volume examines family labor models that developed after emancipation, stabilized under the Federal Tobacco Program introduced in the 1930s, and faded with mechanization, out-migration, and the general retreat of tobacco culture since the 1970s. Following the Civil War, freedpeople and white yeomen alike were attracted to rising tobacco prices and improving access to markets. But tobacco farming was very labor intensive, and every leaf was handled several times in the complex of tasks ending on the warehouse floor. With an eye ever on the bottom line, small farmers needed to reduce overhead any way they could. Perhaps family labor was not inevitable, as the author suggests, but it was cheap and readily available to small farmers. Spouses and children had to be housed, fed, and clothed anyway, and helping with the tobacco crop was expected as a contribution to the family’s living standard. Family labor patterns persisted into the twentieth century. Old Belt families earned the respect of their communities through their work ethic and farming skills. Indeed, family labor often ranged to other tasks such as tending a vegetable garden and caring for animals. While sharecropping and tenancy increased regionwide, especially in the cotton country, the Old Belt tobacco region was an exception. By 1920, a solid majority of tobacco growers owned the farms they worked. And this distinction was not limited to whites. Black proprietorship reached 67 percent in some Old Belt counties. One of the book’s greatest strengths is the analysis of work routines common to bright tobacco culture in the early twentieth century. The author includes not only technical descriptions of the tasks but their social aspects as well. Another important asset is the [End Page 117] excellent summary of agrarian activism in the Old Belt. Hoping to reform a biased marketing system, Old Belt tobacco growers joined successively the Grange, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the National Farmers’ Union. With a deft hand, Bennett guides the reader through this often-confusing series of organizations and explains their successes and failures. In the chapter titled “Cooperation,” Bennett discusses the rise and fall of the Tri-State Tobacco Growers Cooperative, the most important reform movement in the tobacco country between the 1880s and the 1930s. Seeking to strengthen their inherently weak marketing position, reform-minded growers in the Carolinas and Virginia mounted a vigorous campaign to organize tobacco farmers as a counterweight to manufacturers and warehousemen. Supported by the Cooperative Extension Service and leading publications such as The Progressive Farmer, the Tri-State crossed boundaries of race and gender to an extent remarkable for the 1920s. While the Tri-State never achieved its full potential, it did raise tobacco prices for a few years. The New Deal drew a bold line across the page of southern agriculture, dividing the history of bright tobacco into “before” and “after.” Acreage allotments helped to balance supply with demand, and price supports ensured that even mediocre farmers could profit from every leaf they could urge from their allotment. After World War II, mechanical and chemical technologies increased yields, but ever larger crops threatened to overwhelm the tobacco commodity program. Quota reductions fell hardest on small farmers, hastening their exit from the culture. As tobacco farming became more capital intensive, historic family labor patterns gave way to migrant labor. By the 1980s, growing health concerns and rising leaf imports weakened domestic producers further. The final chapter, “Buyout,” discusses the endgame of the venerable tobacco commodity program in the 1990s and early 2000s. Consumer groups asked why government should continue to subsidize a commodity that posed a serious public-health hazard. Compromises such as the No-Net-Cost Act, which shifted program costs to...

Southern Appalachia's Nineteenth-Century Bright Tobacco Boom: Industrialization, Urbanization, and the Culture of Tobacco

Over the past three decades, scholars have delved deeply into the post–Civil War industrialization of Appalachia. Although often they have identified agricultural conditions in the mountains as a major factor shaping the emergence of industry in the region, they have paid less attention to the agricultural history of the area. As a result, much about agricultural choices and rural life in the region remains unexplored, and our understanding remains incomplete. The story of bright tobacco in southern Appalachia serves as a reminder that some Appalachian farmers, rather than merely subsistence-oriented mountain folk, participated in agricultural trends and a network of market connections common to the South and the nation in the late nineteenth century. Tobacco culture bound them to the capital resources, marketing operations, and consumer goods of urban centers, even as the profits reaped from tobacco fueled local, urban-led campaigns for industrial development and resource extraction that accompanied the creation of an Appalachian stereotype mocking rural mountain people.

Experimental tests on a new harvesting system for Burley tobacco

The globalization of the tobacco production has led to a drop in competitiveness of the Italian tobacco on the world market. Burley is the main variety of tobacco cropped in Campania region of Southern Italy. Its leaves have to be sewn, in the curing phase. Aim of this work is to show the results of the implementation of a new harvest machine prototype. Basically, the machine used for Bright tobacco, totally mechanical harvested, which doesn’t need to be sewn because it requires an indirect-fire treatment into the curing furnaces. The machine was modified in order to mechanize harvesting of Burley tobacco, and tested on four cultivars of Burley tobacco under three different planting layouts. The Burley tobacco leaves can be harvested mechanically by pulling individual leaves off the stalk; leaves are then sorted and tied in bundles prior to sewing. A mechanical burley tobacco harvesting system was evaluated. This machine consists in realizing a leaves orientation system based on the different weight between the leaf blade and the stalk enhanced by an air flow. The measurements taken were harvest timing, work capacity, and quality standards of the work carried out. The results, in terms of user time, range from 6.67 h/ha to 7.80 h/ha while in terms of operational efficiency are between 88% and 89%. The average user capacity recorded for the four cultivars is equal to 0.14 ha/h, a value far from the one recorded for the same harvesting machine used for Bright tobacco (0.25 ha/h). The harvest timing capacity, range from 0.51 t/h to 0.99 t/h. The work productivity goes from 0.17 t to 0.33 t per hour of human unit respectively. The average number of detached leaves, depending on the cultivar, has been between 523 and 744. Concerning the leaf orientation, a general percentage of 73% was achieved.

The generation of carbon monoxide and carbonyl compounds in reconstituted tobacco sheet

In recent years, reconstituted tobacco sheet (RTs) has played an increasingly significant role in tobacco industry. The yields of CO and carbonyl compounds (formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, acrolein, propanal, butenal, 2-butanone, and butyraldehyde) in cigarette mainstream smoke of RTs and their formation mechanisms were investigated in this paper. Self-made RTs (SRTs) was studied and compared with foreign Mauduit RTs (MRTs) and three commercial tobacco leaves on routine chemical constituents, thermal behavior, and subsequent gaseous products evolution. The cigarette smoking results illustrated that the yields of CO (2.9 mg per puff) and carbonyl compounds (about 208 μg per puff) in mainstream smoke of SRTs and MRTs were at the same level, and obviously higher than those of three commercial tobacco leaves. The routine chemical constituent results demonstrated that bright tobacco and oriental tobacco contained particularly higher contents of reducing sugar and total sugar than RTs, while burley tobacco had a high content of nitrogen compounds. The thermal behavior results showed that SRTs (11.6 % min−1) and MRTs (14.5 % min−1) presented higher maximum mass-loss rate than bright tobacco (7.8 % min−1), burley tobacco (7.1 % min−1), and oriental tobacco (6.8 % min−1). The thermal decomposition of saccharides and combustion of residual char played the most important roles in mass-loss and gaseous products formation. The decomposition of saccharides and incomplete combustion of carbonized residual char primarily contributed to the formation of CO, while carbonyl compounds evolution was mainly attributed to the decomposition of saccharides alone.

Role of the Filters in the Formation and Stabilization of Semiquinone Radicals Collected from Cigarette Smoke.

The fractional pyrolysis of Bright tobacco was performed in nitrogen atmosphere over the temperature range of 240 - 510 °C in a specially constructed, high temperature flow reactor system. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy was used to analyze the free radicals in the initially produced total particular matter (TPM) and in TPM after exposure to ambient air (aging). Different filters have been used to collect TPM from tobacco smoke: cellulosic, cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, nylon, Teflon and Cambridge. The collection of the primary radicals (measured immediately after collection of TPM on filters), the formation and stabilization of the secondary radicals (defined as radicals formed during aging of TPM samples on the filters) depend significantly on the material of the filter. A mechanistic explanation about different binding capability of the filters decreasing in the order: cellulosic < cellulose nitrate < cellulose acetate < nylon ~ teflon is presented. Different properties were observed for the Cambridge filter. Specific care must be taken using the filters for identification of radicals from tobacco smoke to avoid artifacts in each case.

Characterization of a gap-junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) assay using cigarette smoke

Inhibition of gap-junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) via exposure to various toxic substances has been implicated in tumor promotion. In the present study, cigarette smoke total particulate matter (TPM), a known inhibitor of GJIC, were used to characterize a new GJIC screening assay in three independent experiments. The main features of this assay were automated fluorescence microscopy combined with non-invasive parachute technique. Rat liver epithelial cells (WB-F344) were stained with the fluorescent dye Calcein AM (acetoxymethyl) and exposed to TPM from the Kentucky Reference Cigarette 2R4F (a blend of Bright and Burley tobaccos) and from two single-tobacco cigarettes (Bright and Burley) for 3h. Phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (TPA) was used as positive control and 0.5% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as solvent control. The transfer of dye to adjacent cells (percentage of stained cells) was used as a measure of cellular communication. A clear and reproducible dose–response of GJIC inhibition following TPM exposure was seen. Reproducibility and repeatability measurements for the 2R4F cigarette were 3.7% and 6.9%, respectively. The half-maximal effective concentration values were 0.34ng/ml for TPA, 0.050mg/ml for the 2R4F, 0.044mg/ml for the Bright cigarette, and 0.060mg/ml for the Burley cigarette. The assay was able to discriminate between the two single-tobacco cigarettes (P<0.0001), and between the single-tobacco cigarettes and the 2R4F (P=0.0008, 2R4F vs. Burley and P<0.0001, 2R4F vs. Bright). Thus, this assay can be used to determine the activity of complex mixtures such as cigarette smoke with high throughput and high precision.

Making tobacco bright: creating an American commodity, 1617-1937

In her sweeping history of the American tobacco industry, Barbara Hahn traces the emergence of the tobacco plant's many varietal types, arguing that they are products not of nature but of economic relations and continued and intense market regulation. Hahn focuses her study on the most popular of these varieties, Bright Flue-Cured Tobacco. First grown in the inland Piedmont along the Virginia-North Carolina border, Bright Tobacco now grows all over the world, primarily because of its unique-and easily replicated-cultivation and curing methods. Hahn traces the evolution of technologies in a variety of regulatory and cultural environments to reconstruct how Bright Tobacco became, and remains to this day, a leading commodity in the global tobacco industry. This study asks not what effect tobacco had on the world market, but how that market shaped tobacco into types that served specific purposes and became distinguishable from one another more by technologies of production than genetics. In so doing, it explores the intersection of crossbreeding, tobacco-raising technology, changing popular demand, attempts at regulation, and sheer marketing ingenuity during the heyday of the American tobacco industry. Combining economic theory with the history of technology, Making Tobacco Bright revises several narratives in American history, from colonial staple-crop agriculture to the origins of the tobacco industry to the rise of identity politics in the twentieth century.

Two-year investigations on the integrated control of weeds and root parasites in Virginia bright tobacco ( Nicotiana tabacum L.) in central Italy

The current revision of pesticides in the EU, including those for soil disinfection, will necessitate the introduction of alternative integrated methods for the control of weeds and parasites in tobacco production in Italy. The present study compared the effect of some soil fumigants, biocontrol agents, cover crops and mulching for the control of tobacco weeds and root parasites. The results show that the different soil fumigants had an important role in increasing tobacco yield, due to their ability to control weeds and the nematodes Meloidogyne incognita and Meloidogyne javanica. In particular, a typical nematicide like 1,3-dichloropropene did not control only nematodes but also Portulaca oleracea, a common weed in Italian tobacco fields. Fenamiphos, although showed a certain efficacy in controlling root-knot nematodes, did not generally have a satisfactory activity at the dose of 40 g m −1; cover crops like Trifolium squarrosum and Eruca sativa and a commercial formulation composed by the endomycorrhizal fungi Glomus spp., the antagonistic fungi Trichoderma spp. and bacteria including Pseudomonas, Bacillus and Streptomyces (Micosat F, CCS Aosta, Italy), were not able to control root tobacco diseases. The investigations confirmed that a prolonged monoculture causes a reduction of black root rot. Soil fumigation and the use of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), influencing the inoculum density of Chalara populations, can contribute to the maintenance or to the establishment of particularly unfavourable conditions for the saprophytic growth of the pathogen, leading to a lower development of the disease.

Reasons to Talk about Tobacco

In June 2008 Agricultural History Society president Jess Gilbert asked me to replace a panelist on a session with the historian Linda Gordon, who presented a paper on the Farm Security Administration (fsa) photographer Dorothea Lange. I recalled an inter view I had done in 1981 with archivist and author Leonard A. Rapport (1913-2008), who had accompanied the fsa photographer Post Wolcott (1910-1990) when she photographed tobacco warehouses in Durham, North Carolina, so I put together a pa per, Marion Post Wolcott s Tobacco Auction Photographs, featuring Wolcott s images. After the session, Jess urged me to expand the paper and present it as my Organization of American Historians (oah) presidential address.1 Jess's enthusiasm brought to mind other reasons to talk about tobacco?reasons that are personal and familial, but also broadly historical. My great grandfather, Robert Alex ander Hunt, moved his family southward from Granville County to Nash County, North Carolina, in the late nineteenth century as the bright tobacco culture spread south. The wave of cultivation, curing, and marketing skills that swept through the Carolinas and Georgia was part of a significant reconfiguration in southern rural life that included the spread of capital-intensive rice cultivation across the Louisiana prairie into Texas and north to Arkansas, the erasure of the Mississippi Delta's Big Woods to usher in planta tion cotton production, and the increasing role of government, science, and technology in agricultural practice. My maternal grandparents, Annie Sykes and Robert Calvin Hunt, farmed with few modern conveniences in the Franklin County, North Carolina, community of Seven Paths, raising primarily tobacco, cotton, and corn. They did not get electricity or indoor plumbing until after World War II, and my grandmother cooked on a woodstove until the 1960s, when her daughters forced an electric stove on her. She stood back and twisted the electric stove's dials as if she were setting the timer on a bomb. During my childhood, I worked on my grandparents' farm barning tobacco, graduating through the harvesting processes from handing to trucking to priming. When we traded help with other farms down the road, I would ride our mule past Mr. Ruffin Collie, never suspecting that the friendly man sitting under the tree and peacefully chewing tobacco would survive to be

Characterization of bright tobaccos by multivariate analysis of 13C CPMAS NMR spectra

Univariate and multivariate statistics were applied to characterize cured bright tobacco samples on the basis of their 13C CPMAS NMR spectra and leaf constituent analysis. NMR spectra were obtained for 55 samples selected from a set of 134 samples of graded bright tobacco leaves from crop year 1999. Historical leaf constituent analyses were available for total alkaloids, reducing sugars, total nitrogen, and insoluble ash. In addition, we applied HPLC to quantify the two abundant plant polyphenols, chlorogenic acid, and rutin. Principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) of the NMR spectra revealed systematic relationships between groups of samples related to these substances and afforded predictive quantitative models for the analyzed constituents. Analysis of the PLS significant variables showed that leaf polysaccharides, alkaloids, and minerals are major determinants influencing the grading of cured bright tobacco leaves.

Green tobacco sickness in Poland

Green tobacco sickness (GTS) is an illness associated with exposure to nicotine originating directly from the growing tobacco plant. The exposure takes place in the course of activities during tobacco farming. Nausea, vomiting, headache and dizziness are the symptoms typical of GTS. The GTS cases have been most commonly reported in the USA, Japan, India and Italy. The first case of GTS in Poland has been diagnosed in a young man working on a Virginia bright tobacco plantation. The patient had symptoms typical of GTS. The toxicological analysis of urine demonstrated the presence of cotinine at the level of 869 ng/ml. Intravenous fluids, anticholinergic agents and potassium supplementation were used in the treatment. Interestingly, diplopia at the initial stage of tobacco poisoning and horizontal nystagmus, which resolved on the 2nd day of hospital stay were observed. We believe that cases of GTS occur in Poland; however patients do not seek medical care. Given that the majority of activities during tobacco farming in Poland are performed manually, it seems necessary to launch a public awareness campaign on GTS and decontamination methods.

Reductions in the tobacco specific nitrosamine (TSNA) content of tobaccos taken from commercial Canadian cigarettes and corresponding reductions in TSNA deliveries in mainstream smoke from such cigarettes

Tobacco specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) are suspected to cause smoking-related neoplastic diseases. The change from direct-fired to indirect-fired barns (aka kilns) for curing bright (aka Virginia, flue-cured) tobaccos was made to reduce the TSNA concentrations. The effectiveness of such processes in reducing the deliveries of TSNAs to the users of the products should be monitored. However, it is difficult to assess the effects of this reduction on the TSNA levels in mainstream smoke when cigarette blends contain burley tobaccos and other blend components that can increase smoke TSNA concentrations. Canadian cigarettes made prior to and in the few years just after the conversion to indirect-fired curing should not be subject to such interferences. Thus, the TSNA content of tobaccos and mainstream smoke from six brands of Canadian cigarettes produced in 2003, 2004, and 2005 were determined. Reductions in NNK [4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone], the most important TSNA in flue-cured tobaccos, levels in the tobacco blends ranged from 60% to 85%. The corresponding reductions in mainstream smoke TSNA levels ranged from 59% to 72% (ISO smoking conditions) and 58-76% (Health Canada Intensive smoking conditions). These results show that other factors (microorganisms, nitrite levels) may be negating the TSNA reductions achieved by indirect-fired curing.

Paradox of Precision: Bright Tobacco as Technology Transfer, 1880-1937

This article compares two episodes of technology transfer in the 1890s: the movement of bright tobacco production technology to south-central Africa with the spread of the crop to eastern North Carolina and South Carolina. It finds similarities in the people who introduced the crop, but significant differences in the methods used to produce it. This is troubling because the type is defined by the cultivation and especially the curing techniques used to produce it; it is also often described in the historical literature as "Virginia tobacco," even when grown elsewhere. the technological differences are the product of different environments, which include not only the climate but also many elements of the technological system beyond immediate human control: the availability and organization of labor, differences in market structures and marketing institutions, and the government incentives provided to buyers. Therefore, this essay takes as its subject the paradox inherent in the official classification of tobacco types regulated by the USDA and argues that varietal types represent a form of market regulation disguised as botanical taxonomy.

Paradox of Precision: Bright Tobacco as Technology Transfer, 1880–1937

Abstract This article compares two episodes of technology transfer in the 1890s: the movement of bright tobacco production technology to south-central Africa with the spread of the crop to eastern North Carolina and South Carolina. It finds similarities in the people who introduced the crop, but significant differences in the methods used to produce it. This is troubling because the type is defined by the cultivation and especially the curing techniques used to produce it; it is also often described in the historical literature as "Virginia tobacco," even when grown elsewhere. The technological differences are the product of different environments, which include not only the climate but also many elements of the technological system beyond immediate human control: the availability and organization of labor, differences in market structures and marketing institutions, and the government incentives provided to buyers. Therefore, this essay takes as its subject the paradox inherent in the official classification of tobacco types regulated by the USDA and argues that varietal types represent a form of market regulation disguised as botanical taxonomy.