Tobacco production system
AssigneeUniversal Leaf Tobacco Company, Inc.
InventorsG. Lea Scott, Joshua F. Warren
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A tobacco production system is provided for producing useable tobacco material having chemical and physical properties acceptable to tobacco industry stakeholders, by growing tobacco entirely in a directly seeded system, under an intensive biomass growing system, mechanically harvesting above-ground portions of the plant a plurality of times during the growing season, curing tobacco leaves and stalks together, and processing the cured tobacco material to obtain cured leaf material suitable for use in tobacco products including, but not limited to, cigarettes, cigars, snus, snuff, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco, reconstituted tobacco material, and other manufactured tobacco products.
Claims17
A system for producing tobacco suitable for making manufactured tobacco products, comprising:
- (a) direct seeding of tobacco seeds at a rate sufficient to produce a plant population density of at least 500,000 tobacco plants per acre after germination;
- (b) mechanically harvesting above-ground portions of the tobacco plants at least one time during a growing season, to obtain harvested tobacco plant material comprising leaves attached to stalks, thereby obtaining a harvested tobacco plant material characterized by average stalks (stems) of between 2 to 60 inches, average green stalk (stem) thickness less than 1.5 inches, and an average of about 4 to 18 leaves per harvested plant;
- and
- (c) curing the harvested tobacco plant material comprising leaves attached to stalks to obtain a cured harvested tobacco plant material.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.