When flue-cured tobacco was introduced in India way back in 1928, its cultivation was taken up in clay soils. With the changing trends in the world, India had switched over to light soil tobacco cultivation in late 60s, but even today the tobacco cultivated in clay soils constitutes 35% of the production of total flue-cured tobacco produced in India. The quality of tobacco is comparatively poor and to avoid production of further low quality tobacco it is grown under residual moisture conditions and the yields are fairly low which could otherwise have been very high. To improve the yields and enhance specific physical qualities like maturity, colour and pliability, experiments were carried out with modified agrotechniques during 1998-99 season in 2 locations under clay soils. The modifications adopted were: digging drainage canals of 45 cm width and 45 cm depth running throughout the gradient of the field. This allows the excess moisture to drain out if there is a sudden rain. The plantation is changed to allow better intercultivation by adopting a double row plantation giving a spacing of 100 cm + 50 cm x 50 cm. Intercultivations were carried out only between two double rows. In view of the crop being grown under residual moisture conditions generally the top half of the plant suffers due to lack of moisture. As a life saving irrigation one small watering was given when the crop entered into drier phase with 8 to 10 leaves on the top half of the plant. The irrigation was approximately 20 mm (200 m³) of water per hectare. The farmers, due to fear of improper curing do not top the crop. However, because of light watering given, topping was carried out at 20 leaves height. Right from 30th day onwards, vigorous plant growth was observed in the treated plot compared to control and no difficulty was experienced during curing. Due to the life saving irrigation given, the quality of leaf did not suffer but improved. From all angles we found that the modified agrotechniques had improved the yields by 200 kg per hectare whilst improving the quality - viz.; degree of ripeness, pliability, shatterability etc. Details of physical and chemical qualities will be discussed in the paper.