THE IMPACT OF HARVESTING AT DIFFERENT MATURITY ON THE CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF THE RAW MATERIAL OF P 66 9

Authors

  • Natasha Zdraveska University "St.Kliment Ohridski"-Bitola, Scientific Tobacco Institute-Prilep, Kicevska bb, 7500 Prilep, Republic of North Macedonia
  • Marija Srbinoska University "St.Kliment Ohridski"-Bitola, Scientific Tobacco Institute-Prilep, Kicevska bb, 7500 Prilep, Republic of North Macedonia
  • Karolina Kocoska University "St.Kliment Ohridski"-Bitola, Scientific Tobacco Institute-Prilep, Kicevska bb, 7500 Prilep, Republic of North Macedonia

Keywords:

tobacco quality, chemical composition, maturity, soluble sugar, Shmuk’s number

Abstract

Tobacco leaves harvested at different stages of maturity have different chemical compositions that affect their smoking properties. Following a standard methodology, an experiment with Prilep P 66 9 was conducted at the experimental field of the Scientific Tobacco Institute - Prilep. Three variants were included in the trial - oriental tobacco harvested during technological maturity, before technological maturity, as well as tobacco leaves harvested after technological maturity. The aim of this study was to perceive the quality of tobacco depending on the time of harvest. Тobacco harvested at technological maturity gives a high quality tobacco raw material with a content of soluble sugars of 26.17% for middle belt leaves and 25.97% for upper belt leaves. Tobacco leaves harvested at green state specify a very low Shmuk’s number (2.30 for the middle belt leaves and 2.20 for the upper belt leaves) which indicates lower quality.

References

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Published

2026-10-21

Issue

Vol. 72 No. 1-6 (2025): Тутун/Tobacco

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Natasha Zdraveska, Marija Srbinoska, Karolina Kocoska

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.