Here's a question for our resident tobacco-growing authorities: Has anyone ever successfully crossed any of the varieties of Burley and Virginia tobacco plants to produce a hybrid? Would this even be possible, or is this just a "pipe dream"?
Have There Ever Been Any Burley/Virginia Tobacco Hybrids?
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Interesting question. Looking forward to an answer. Isn't everything a hybrid of some sort by now, though?
Yes, Way back in the 1800's it was very common for growers to try to cross pollinate and come up with the next big thing. Bonanza was a tobacco that was a cross between White Burley and Yellow Orinoco (a Virginia). Today almost all commercial tobaccos are hybrids, bred for disease resistance and sometimes production. You could probably get on some of the bigger seed supply house websites and peruse their offerings, they usually tell you what the hybrid was crossed with.
Sounds like, uh, other plants. You have some pure varieties, but for cultivation purposes, most are hybrids that then went through extreme bottlenecking to produce desired traits.
Genetics is perfectly systematic but incredibly intricate to my layman's mind. So here's the trick. It might be that agronomists could do a hybrid that would magically combine the virtues of a great Va/bur blend in one leaf. However, I think this would take many, many crosses that would give one or the other more dominance and also produce some traits that are dominant to one tobacco or the other, or just bad traits for flavor and hardiness. I think what would most likely emerge is an interesting leaf with a third set of virtues, but not one that elegantly combines the two. Tobacco genetics is/was a huge discipline and industry. I had a friend who was a retired tobacco geneticist, Josh Lee at NC State University, who was a master birdwatcher and wrote a terrific non-fiction book about mules.
Semois are always great stuff, hope it was more widely distributed in europe, I got feeling that these EU tobacco directives & legislations may put end for these small operations,forcing them to shut down operations in the near coming years.
Well Semois is a top 5 tobacco for me, so perhaps I should soon buy more bricks! I hope your prediction is wrong.
@deathmetal -- I read that Semois is a burley that has developed its distinctive characteristics over time due to its environmental variables ; but is rather a hybrid of different burleys or other tobaccos?
@deathmetal -- I read that Semois is a burley that has developed its distinctive characteristics over time due to its environmental variables ; but is rather a hybrid of different burleys or other tobaccos?
Maybe it did; Burley after all is an atavism of Virginias, so retains (somewhere) those traits. But maybe it was a hybrid, which would be more likely.
Um, I think hybrids are created by cross-breeding in the field or greenhouse, whereas GMO's are genetically modified in the lab. I realize this is like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but it is a different set of skills and really expensive equipment, in either case.
Naturally, I'm being my usual tongue-in-cheek self. The fact remains, though, whether you alter genes the long way or the short way, you still wind up with altered genes. All the pitchforks and torches in the world can't make genetic alterations all good or all bad.
Yeah, I was both amused and appalled when scientists delivering papers at my place of work spoke of "making a mouse," they were so proud of jimmying the DNA that had developed over a few million years. I kept wanting to say, yeah that's how they produced Secretariat in 1970. Welcome aboard.
jitterbugdude:
Thank-you for the information. Was the Bonanza cross that you mentioned ever commercially viable? It certainly sounds intriguing.
Thank-you for the information. Was the Bonanza cross that you mentioned ever commercially viable? It certainly sounds intriguing.
Yes it was. If you get a copy of "Tobacco Leaf" by Killebrew he lists several dozen tobaccos that were common at the time (late 1880's).
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