Abstract:

To explore the curing process in heat pump bulk for one time harvesting upper tobacco leaves in the tobacco-rice multiple-cropping area, ‘Yunyan 87’ was used as the experimental material to study the effects of different curing processes on the ratio of greenish and miscellaneous tobacco, high quality tobacco ratio, average price, energy consumption, appearance quality, physical character, chemical composition, and smoking quality of the cured tobacco leaves. The results show that compared with the four-step curing process, the steady temperature and humidity drop curing process can enhance the chromaticity of tobacco leaves, increase the chlorogenic acid content of tobacco leaves, increase the proportion of main tobacco leaves by 5.61%, reduce the proportion of miscellaneous tobacco leaves by 38.05%, reduce the proportion of greenish tobacco leaves by 54.40%, increase the high quality tobacco ratio by14.74%, increase the average price, appearance quality index, and total score of smoking quality by 8.59%, 8.29%, and 2.38%, respectively, and reduce the total energy consumption cost by 3.95%. Therefore, for the one time harvesting upper tobacco leaves in the tobacco-rice multiple-cropping area, the use of steady temperature and humidity drop curing process in heat pump intensive curing barn can improve the quality of flue-cured tobacco leaves, reduce curing costs, and have certain promotion value.

Key words: ‘Yunyan 87’, upper tobacco leaves, heat pump bulk, steady temperature and humidity drop curing process, quality of flue-cured tobacco