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ChinaVoodoo

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This link downloads one of the most thorough PDFs I've seen on the cultivation of tobacco.

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&sour...WMAV6BAgCEAE&usg=AOvVaw3pn2Ib1ScnnmHd-A_fZaNm

Edit - That link no longer works
Check this one out - https://www.ikisan.com/tn-tobacco-varieties.html

India classifies tobacco varieties in a similar way to how we do. They have flue-cured, burley, oriental, cigar filler, and wrapper. They also have groups such as chewing tobacco, hookah tobacco, bidi tobacco, motihari tobacco, natu tobacco, and cheroot tobacco.

In the hookah and chewing tobacco groups, there are both tabacum and rustica varieties, so it is clear the categories are somewhat general.

Motihari tobacco is of the rustica species, and has multiple uses from hookah paste to chew and snus.

Natu tobacco is sun cured. In some regions, it is mostly used for cigarettes, but in other regions, it is also used for cheroots, and hookah tobacco. Is it that natu is multi-purpose, or do different regions have distinct types of natu that lend themselves to different uses?

Cheroot tobacco is a group of cigar tobaccos with narrow leaves, as opposed to broad leaf, and is useful for rolling narrow gauge cigars. Some varieties are named after their place of origin such as Lanka, Sedarapatty, and Bhavani. The difference between these lines? Who knows? Photos and descriptions show some interesting variations such as some with clearly petiolate leaf attachment. For example, DR-1

PI_405677_WP~2-600x874.jpg

Interestingly, the tobacco Bosikappal which we know, classified as a primitive, is likely a cheroot tobacco. The above document mentions Oosikappal as the typical cheroot tobacco. There are several other tobaccos mentioned who's names end in -appal. All of them are cigar/cheroot varieties.

I've been interested in growing cheroot tobacco for some time. In India, I enjoyed the flavor of the cheroots I tried, and would like to give it a go, myself, so you can count on me growing Bosikappal next year, and whatever else I can get my hands on.
 
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Levi Gross

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Very nice and it’s over 500 pages of information. I’m interested in bidi making. I have googled it with no results so hopefully upon reading the document I will become enlightened to the process!
 

Charly

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Very nice file ChinaVoodoo !
Thanks for sharing.

A lot of things to read, now I just have to find some time to read it :)
 

davek14

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Bidi or Beedi is made up of two plant's leaves.

(1)- Diospyros melanoxylon, the Coromandel ebony or East Indian ebony, is a species of flowering tree in the family Ebenaceae that is native to India and Sri Lanka and that has a hard, dry bark. Its common name derives from Coromandel, the coast of southeastern India. Locally it is known as temburini or by its Hindi name tendu. In Odisha and Jharkhand it is known as kendu. The leaves can be wrapped around tobacco to create the Indian beedi, which has outsold conventional cigarettes in India.


(2)- Bauhinia racemosa commonly known as the Bidi leaf tree is a rare medicinal species of flowering shrub with religious significance. It is a small crooked tree with drooping branches that grows 3–5 metres (10–16 ft) tall and flowers between February and May. It is native to tropical Southeast Asia.

I'm not sure what you could substitute for those. You could go old style Rasta and use a corn husk ;)
 

deluxestogie

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You could go old style Rasta and use a corn husk ;)
That would be old style Maya.

MayaSmokingStringTiedCigar_OaxactunMexico_400_brown.jpg


Bob
 

Levi Gross

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Seeing that the only thing tropical about Indiana is the sweltering heat of summer I’m probably not going to find a substitute for those two distinct leaves or even be able to grow them. Maybe I could get some sent to me ...
 

Levi Gross

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The only thing better than google is having peers that know things you don’t! It appears that both trees seed are available for sale but I have yet to go into Wikipedia and research them and their growing information.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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The only thing better than google is having peers that know things you don’t! It appears that both trees seed are available for sale but I have yet to go into Wikipedia and research them and their growing information.

In my opinion, bidis aren't all that great, owing to the fact that maybe less than half of them are actually tobacco. Cheroots are where it's at.
 

hooyoo

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@ChinaVoodoo you may have seen this already, but it looks like there are at least 3 cheroot tobacco accessions in USDA ARS-GRIN:
-Natu Cheroot (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1305568)
-Dindigal Cheroot (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1308370)
-Dindigul Cheroot from Indonesia (I would imagine the same as the Indian accession, but the photographs appear to show a different looking plant) (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1277339)

I also found this interesting account of the notable history of Indian cigars and cheroots: https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/9/17312/The-Trichinopoly-Cheroot

I'd imagine it might be difficult for you to request these if you're in Canada, but perhaps others here have grown them out?
 

ChinaVoodoo

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@ChinaVoodoo you may have seen this already, but it looks like there are at least 3 cheroot tobacco accessions in USDA ARS-GRIN:
-Natu Cheroot (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1305568)
-Dindigal Cheroot (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1308370)
-Dindigul Cheroot from Indonesia (I would imagine the same as the Indian accession, but the photographs appear to show a different looking plant) (https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail?id=1277339)

I also found this interesting account of the notable history of Indian cigars and cheroots: https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/9/17312/The-Trichinopoly-Cheroot

I'd imagine it might be difficult for you to request these if you're in Canada, but perhaps others here have grown them out?
Hi. Thank you. I'll definitely read this.

GRIN doesn't send seed tobacco seed to hobbyists any more, but I don't think they take issue with sending to Canada.

My intended grow changes month by month until a few weeks after I plant, lol. I'll get around to the Bosikappal seeds one of these years.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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This video shows a cheroot expert rolling up a storm but in a very peaceful setting. The cars honking in the background make me drowsy. It is like a lullaby. I particularly like this guy's wrapper prep. It looks like his filler is totally different from his wrapper. This long narrow filler is probably Oosikappal. It appears this guy makes enough to survive on his own.

View: https://youtu.be/18ASAhRDD1c



What we have here is a very quaint video with no subtitles which shows some gentlemen hard at work rolling cheroots. There is some kind of sauce and petuning, and a musical performance. It opens with a demonstration of a simple and efficient tuck cutter design. The leaves they are using in this video are much wider than the other two. It may be one of the hybrid cheroot tobaccos, like Bhavani Special for example which is a hybrid between Narrowleaf Oosikappal and Olor.

View: https://youtu.be/9_25JohMSyA


This fellow has a pretty awesome knife. He also uses his feet while stripping stems. They press it between the bottom of their left foot and their right shin. Like, why not, right? Notice the low leaf quality in this one? I thought so. Looks green compared to the others. And his water bucket? For whatever reason, he is just trying to get by. I believe that this fella is not representative of the average roller in India so I hesitate to share it because my hope in sharing these videos is to share my appreciation for cheroots and India in general.

View: https://youtu.be/ppQ91qYtTcw
 
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ghettobrew

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This video shows a cheroot expert rolling up a storm but in a very peaceful setting. The cars honking in the background make me drowsy. It is like a lullaby. I particularly like this guy's wrapper prep. It looks like his filler is totally different from his wrapper. This long narrow filler is probably Oosikappal. It appears this guy makes enough to survive on his own.
View: https://youtu.be/18ASAhRDD1c What we have here is a very quaint video with no subtitles which shows some gentlemen hard at work rolling cheroots. There is some kind of sauce and petuning, and a musical performance. It opens with a demonstration of a simple and efficient tuck cutter design. The leaves they are using in this video are much wider than the other two. It may be one of the hybrid cheroot tobaccos, like Bhavani Special for example which is a hybrid between Narrowleaf Oosikappal and Olor.
View: https://youtu.be/9_25JohMSyA This fellow has a pretty awesome knife. He also uses his feet while stripping stems. They press it between the bottom of their left foot and their right shin. Like, why not, right? Notice the low leaf quality in this one? I thought so. Looks green compared to the others. And his water bucket? For whatever reason, he is just trying to get by. I believe that this fella is not representative of the average roller in India so I hesitate to share it because my hope in sharing these videos is to share my appreciation for cheroots and India in general.
View: https://youtu.be/ppQ91qYtTcw

@ChinaVoodoo The second video is shot in Jaffna, in the Tamil-speaking region of Sri Lanka. Jaffna tobacco is a distinct variety, but I understand it's predominantly used for chewing tobacco so I'm not sure if that's the variety that is being used here. They don't go into a great deal of detail about the tobacco and processing methods other than the few shots that are shown. Thanks for posting this thread, the information is a great starting point for anyone trying to understand Indian tobacco. There's not a lot of information online, and what there is is focused on cigarette tobacco and commercial manufacturing. I will post any new information I find here.
 

Knucklehead

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@ChinaVoodoo The second video is shot in Jaffna, in the Tamil-speaking region of Sri Lanka. Jaffna tobacco is a distinct variety, but I understand it's predominantly used for chewing tobacco so I'm not sure if that's the variety that is being used here. They don't go into a great deal of detail about the tobacco and processing methods other than the few shots that are shown. Thanks for posting this thread, the information is a great starting point for anyone trying to understand Indian tobacco. There's not a lot of information online, and what there is is focused on cigarette tobacco and commercial manufacturing. I will post any new information I find here.
I will post this for those that are not familiar. Tobacco Asia magazine:
 

MysticMapacho

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There's definitely good tobacco being grown in India. I used to live in southern India in a city called Mysore. During the time I lived there I tried a few locally grown tobaccos and bidis.
But what really blew my mind was how amazing the Indian brand of cigarettes called Gold Flake were. I've actually got an Indian friend who's visiting his parents back home in Calcutta.
The one thing I asked him to bring back for me is a carton of Gold Flake. They're the only commercial cigarettes I'll smoke.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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There's definitely good tobacco being grown in India. I used to live in southern India in a city called Mysore. During the time I lived there I tried a few locally grown tobaccos and bidis.
But what really blew my mind was how amazing the Indian brand of cigarettes called Gold Flake were. I've actually got an Indian friend who's visiting his parents back home in Calcutta.
The one thing I asked him to bring back for me is a carton of Gold Flake. They're the only commercial cigarettes I'll smoke.
I wonder if they are flue cured or sun cured.
 
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