Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from leaves of plants of the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, is used in some medicines. It is most commonly used as a drug, and is a valuable cash crop for countries such as Cuba, India, China, and the United States. Tobacco is a name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae (family of black pudding) and for the product made from the leaf and used in cigars, tobacco and pipe and chewing tobacco. Tobacco plants are also used in plant bioengineering, and some of the 60 species are grown as ornamental plants.
It is believed that the major commercial species, N. tabacum, is native to tropical America, like most of Nicotiana plants, but has been cultivated for so long that it is no longer known in nature. N.Rrustica, a kind of soft, fast-burning flavor, was originally grown in Virginia, but is now grown mainly in Turkey, India, and Russia. The nicotine alkaloid is the most characteristic component of tobacco and is responsible for its addictive nature. The harmful effects of tobacco are derived from the thousands of different compounds generated in the smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (such as benzene), formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, polonium 210, nitrosamines (TSNA) and many others.
Tobacco is grown in a similar way to other agricultural products. Seeds are sown in cold frames or spotlights to prevent insect attacks, and then transplanted into fields. Tobacco is an annual crop, usually harvested mechanically or by hand. After harvesting, tobacco is stored for curing, allowing slow oxidation and degradation of carotenoids. This allows the agricultural product to assume properties that are generally attributed to the "softness" of the smoke. After this, tobacco is packed into its various forms of consumption, which include smoking, chewing, snuffing, and so on.
Most cigarettes incorporate cured tobacco, which produces smoother, more inhalable smoke. The use of low pH, inhalable, smoke-cured tobacco is one of the main causes of smoking causing lung cancer and other diseases associated with smoke inhalation.
