Plant management

• Plant management of the tobacco includes soil loosening, weeding, top-dressing, irrigation, topping and desuckering.

Soil loosening

• Tobacco is a quick growing crop and requires good aeration for the growing roots.
• It is very susceptible to poor aeration conditions.
• Thus, soil loosening is done starting immediately after the seedlings are rooted which is about a week after the seedlings are transplanted and are terminated before the tobacco plant covers the space between the row.
• There may be 3-8 soil loosening operations followed by weeding.

Weeding

• Clean cultivation, plastic or organic mulch and manual weeding are the finest ways to keep tobacco field free of weeds because use of chemicals are discouraged in tobacco due to their residues in leaves.
• Broom rape (Orobanche cernua) is an important root-parasitic weed in tobacco that is found towards the end of the season to the tobacco plants.
• It can be controlled by the use of direct spray of Kerosene oil on the soil or by soil application of Ethylene di-bromide (EDB) @ 2-2.5 ml/m2 of the infested area.
• The way of controlling this weed is to collect and destroy it before the seed set.
• However, some chemical herbicides with very negligible residual effects have been prescribed to be used in tobacco.