Abstract:

To clarify the relationship between main chemical components of flue-cured tobacco in Hubei tobacco-growing areas and climatic factors in field period, and differences of tobacco areas, the mathematical statistics were used to analyze the chemical composition, field growth period and meteorological data. The results showed that the precipitation during maturing stage was the leading climatic factor affected nicotine, total sugar, nitrogen-alkali ratio and sugar-alkali ratio. The main climatic factors that affected reducing sugar, total nitrogen and potassium were relative humidity, precipitation and sunshine duration during fast growing stage, respectively. Sunshine duration, diurnal temperature range and average temperature during maturing stage were the main influencing factors for Chlorine, ratio of two sugars and potassium-chlorine ratio, respectively. There were differences in the climate during the field growth period in Hubei tobacco-growing areas, the climate type could be divided into two categories by clustering analysis based on SOM neural network, and the tobacco-growing areas of two climates were consistent with the division of “Jinshennong” and “Qingjiangyuan” tobacco-growing areas according to planting regions. The main climatic factors that affected the differences in potassium, reducing sugar, chlorine and potassium-chlorine ratio in the two types of tobacco areas were sunshine duration during fast growing stage, relative humidity during fast growing stage, sunshine duration during maturing stage and average temperature during maturing stage, respectively.

Key words: Hubei, flue-cured tobacco, chemical component, climatic factor, differentiation