US Nicotiana Germplasm Collection 2013 Nursery

[skychaser]

its really wet. its like living in seattle or something. rain rain rain all the time. the station has had, no shit i just ran the numbers, OVER 25" OF RAIN IN JUNE ALONE.

lol Seattle gets 37 inches per year. You have to go out on the Olympic Peninsula into the rain forest to see anything close to 25 inches in a month. We get about 20" per year here, 2/3 of it as snow in the winter months. June was a very wet month for us with over 4.5". Average is about 1.3". From July to October it rarely ever rains. Last year we went over 100 days without a drop. Fortunately, I have an abundance of water here on our property and a good irrigation system, or I wouldn't grow much of anything but hay or winter wheat.

Temps will be in the upper 80's and 90's for the next couple months now. 100 - 105 is in our forecast for the coming week. But our humidity will be in teens and down to the single digits most days. It's hot, but bone dry. I dunno how you folks east of the Rockies can take all that humidity. A 40+ degree spread between the highs and lows is common here in any season. It can be near 100 in the day will still drop to 55-60 at night.

Jessica, Do you if any studies have been done to identify or develop frost resistant strains?

Also, I switched my TN90 & TN86 to the LC types this year. Are the Low Conversion strains stable or do they revert back in a few generations?

 

[JessicaNicot]

this is the online portal for weather observations at the Central Crops Research Station in Clayton, NC: http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos/index.php?station=CLAY&temporal=daily (i use the daily tab) With the inclusion of another half inch yesterday, the total for June is now just under 26". this is especially absurd when you consider the really bad drought our state experienced just a couple years ago.

 

[JessicaNicot]

Jessica, Do you if any studies have been done to identify or develop frost resistant strains?

Also, I switched my TN90 & TN86 to the LC types this year. Are the Low Conversion strains stable or do they revert back in a few generations?

offhand i dont know of any work thats ever been done on frost resistance in tobacco and my guess if there ever was any it would have been for seedlings in the plant bed (but i imagine they just covered them back in the day if there was a frost warning). i can try to look for you.

the genetic locus that controls the lower rates of nornicotine conversion (LC) is VERY unstable. i believe that people who grow this seed (either gold leaf or rickard i think...) chemically analyse every single plant each time they grow out to pick the lowest nornicotine plants and cull all the other plants that have reverted to higher levels.

 

[skychaser]

Since the lower rates of nornicotine conversion is genetic, I would assume it would be able to be stabilized with further breeding. How many years have the LC strains been available now? I have been told that all the Burley and Dark Tobaccos now sold to commercial tobacco companies must be the LC types. Is this true and why aren't Flu Cured types required to be LC? Is there a different conversion rate between Burleys and Bright Leafs? Or is it because Bright Leafs typically start out with a lower percentage of nicotine to began with, so conversion to nornicotine is less of a concern?

 

[skychaser]

I would be very interested in any info on frost resistance. In the spring I always have 100's of volunteers come up in my field when the days are only into the 50's and nights are still dipping into the low 20's. And I have stumbled on a few types that can take light frosts in the fall, 30F, and a couple that show little to no damage with brief periods down to 27-28f.

 

[NRustica]

Perhaps

537049

has the white flowers.

 

[LeftyRighty]

back to this seed business......
From what all's been posted, if you have good seed stock to begin with, seed from these plants should produce good seed/plants, true to the original stock seed/plants. Correct ???
My reason for asking this, is that my crop is anything but ideal - really crappy weather has produced really ugly, mis-shaped, dwarf plants, with excessive suckering, small leaf, early-blooming, etc.. But I still want to gather seed from these. Seed from these nasty plants will remain true to the strain, and weather permitting, will give me a decent crop in the future. Correct ???

 

[deluxestogie]

LR,
That's pretty much true. The difficulty it presents is in identifying the best plants from which to save seed.

Bob

 

[LeftyRighty]

thanks, The only plants I'm into saving seed are turkish strains this year. The Shirazi look like bushes - set on suckers within days of planting and I got tired of keeping up with them, just let them go. Izmir are skinny little stalks, about 2 feet tall, itty-bitty leaf, after 61 days in the ground. Bursa is ugly, twisted, intertwined - kept falling over in the mud.
I may still save some YTB seeds, but the plants now are only 2 feet tall, dozen or so big leaves, and setting buds. Will probably bloom next week+. Very healthy looking, just really short, squatty plants - not like last year's 6 to 7 foot plants.
Spring weather really sucked this year; finally, now its sunny & hot.
Most of this year's crop is fairing OK. TN90, bright leaf strains, not the crop I was hoping for, but just barely acceptable. The only decent strain are Skychaser's African Red, 5 ft plants, lots of new leaf still forming, no sign of buds, big-healthy leaf.

 

[JessicaNicot]

Since the lower rates of nornicotine conversion is genetic, I would assume it would be able to be stabilized with further breeding. How many years have the LC strains been available now? I have been told that all the Burley and Dark Tobaccos now sold to commercial tobacco companies must be the LC types. Is this true and why aren't Flu Cured types required to be LC? Is there a different conversion rate between Burleys and Bright Leafs? Or is it because Bright Leafs typically start out with a lower percentage of nicotine to began with, so conversion to nornicotine is less of a concern?

im not sure how long the LC lines have been on the market. it is a very unusual genetic locus that does not happen to be in flue-cured types. our sister lab at ncsu has done a lot of work on the family of genes that convert nicotine to nornicotine. i can look for a paper that explains it for you.

 

[JessicaNicot]

back to this seed business......
From what all's been posted, if you have good seed stock to begin with, seed from these plants should produce good seed/plants, true to the original stock seed/plants. Correct ???
My reason for asking this, is that my crop is anything but ideal - really crappy weather has produced really ugly, mis-shaped, dwarf plants, with excessive suckering, small leaf, early-blooming, etc.. But I still want to gather seed from these. Seed from these nasty plants will remain true to the strain, and weather permitting, will give me a decent crop in the future. Correct ???

yes. if you save seed from your unfortunate crop, it should be just fine and grow a normal crop, weather permitting.

 

[JessicaNicot]

guess who's getting more rain today? and tomorrow? i swear its monsoon season!

 

[leverhead]

I don't want to turn the conversation. In flue-cured tobaccos, TSNA formation is limited by having adequate air flow through the leaves during the flue-curing process.

You can send about an inch of rain a week to me.

 

[Chicken]

i'd be intrested to know what type of fertilizer will be used on the field,

ive delivered AGRIUM 4-8-12- fertilizer to tobacco fields in ga.


and have seen other farmers for flue cured tobacco. use SUPER RAINBOW 4-8-12- ferilizer.

it's allmost a shame to know that, the whole field is for seed purposes, and the leaf isnt important.

welcome to the forum..sorry i showed up late,,,, but my commercial driving job keeps me very busy mon-sat.

 

[skychaser]

In flue-cured tobaccos, TSNA formation is limited by having adequate air flow through the leaves during the flue-curing process.

Interesting. So the curing process affects how much nicotine gets converted to nornicotine.

So whats different about the nicotine in an LC variety? Why does a lower amount convert? Is the molecule chemically different in some way? Chemistry is really not my thing.

it's allmost a shame to know that, the whole field is for seed purposes, and the leaf isnt important.

For me. that's good info to know.

 

[leverhead]

Interesting. So the curing process affects how much nicotine gets converted to nornicotine.

Actually (I believe), Nornicotine is the precursor to TNSA's. They're formed by bacterial(?) action in a low air flow environment. There was a thread here a while back about it, I'll see if I can find it.

Try this, around post 10.

http://fairtradetobacco.com/showthread.php?1788-Reducing-TSNAs-in-homegrown-tobacco/page4&highlight=patent

 

[JessicaNicot]

here is a paper that was done by my colleagues here at ncsu on the primary gene (it turns out there is actually a gene family with 3 members) involved in nicotine conversion to nornicotine:
View attachment Chakrabarti et al_Plant Mol Biol_2008.pdf

i dont know if i attached that properly, but i hope you are able to access it.

 

[JessicaNicot]

in other news, the mystery plants in plot #200 are known as "Amerelo 5". i just looked and i have zero information on the background of this variety.

 

[deluxestogie]

Nice article. Thanks for posting it.

While the abstract may be a bit obscure for some FTT members, I think most will find informative content in the article's introduction section.

Bob

 

[workhorse_01]

I agree. I keep going back to the definitions, but what a read! Thank you.

Nice article. Thanks for posting it.

While the abstract may be a bit obscure for some FTT members, I think most will find informative content in the article's introduction section.

Bob