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CORESTA Congress, Online, 2022, Agronomy/Phytopathology Groups, AP 17

Breeding for high nicotine tobacco varieties

MALPICA A.; L’HUMEAU J.; BACHET S.
Bergerac Seed & Breeding, Bergerac, France

The development of many ‘next-generation’ tobacco products is directly linked to the increase in demand for varieties with new chemical profiles. In France there is a commercial interest in a domestic supply of nicotine and this context creates a potential new opportunity for growers to maintain a tobacco crop locally. The objective of this project was to support this new demand by developing new varieties with increased nicotine rates, adapted to French growers’ field conditions and material and profitability context.

A large amount of accessions (from the Imperial Tobacco collection) and lines from our breeding programme were screened during the last five years for this high nicotine target. We obtained a list of five best candidates and a breeding plan has been developed based on a combination of field screening, use of molecular markers and pathological tests for resistance selection, and nicotine analysis at each generation. Our programme is based on conventional breeding.

One of the key points of our project is to be able to use all stalk positions for nicotine extraction and we finally reached an average rate of 6,5 % (dry weight base) nicotine on the whole plant with our best variety. In parallel and in collaboration with field technicians and growers we developed an adapted crop management guideline for high nicotine variety production. The tobacco produced has been validated for its usability through the industrial process for nicotine extraction.