Recently, the Istituto Sperimentale per il Tabacco, utilizing both traditional pedigree selection and the doubled haploid procedure, has produced and evaluated numerous lines and F1 hybrids (male sterile); good cultivars of air cured (Burley) and flue-cured (Virginia Bright) tobacco were selected after 5 seasons of crop evaluation for their yield and quality potential. Using pedigree method, lines G7, G9 and G17 (flue-cured) and G14, G94/2 (untopped Burley) were selected. Among F1 hybrids, from parents obtained either by pedigree or androgenesis, BMS5, BMS12, S7, S11, BMS2 (topped Burley); BMS36, S15 (untopped Burley); BTMS13, BTMS21, BTMS4 (flue-cured), were chosen. These cultivars, with improved yielding ability and good leaf quality, resulted agronomically suitable, with satisfying tolerance to TMV, blue mold and black root rot (with a difference in behaviour for each cultivar). Experiments are in progress both for field evaluation of other genotypes and for breeding Burley and Bright cvs less hazardous to human health and resistant to pests and diseases (aphids, root knot nematodes, CMV, blue mold, oidium, PVY). Somatic hybridization, somaclonal and gametaclonal variations (from protoplasts and androgenesis) together with protoplast fusion and gynogenesis (using the Nicotiana africana method) are being employed both to obtain new genetic variations and to speed things up.