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This research paper leads me to believe that I should not concern myself about Chlorine from city's tap water...

Skafidr

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I'm sort of on a quest to determine why the tobacco I grew last season did not burn well when I tried it in my pipe:

but I had trouble keeping it lit.
(Source: my grow log 2024 entry)

I don't have access to much "hands on" testing nowadays because when I smoke, I smoke outside and it's been cold and not so fun to smoke with the winter temperature.

So instead, I dig around, looking at the theory.

One of my "leads" was that "chlorine in tobacco hinders the burn". So I searched a bit w.r.t. this. Common sources of Cl seem to be from fertilisers and from city's tap water. This lead me to this scientific paper:

Influence of chloride content in irrigation water on yield, morphological features and chemical composition of leaves of three Oriental tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) cultivars

What I get from it:
  • Four quantities of Cl per litres were tested (0, 30 mg/L, 60 mg/L, 120 mg/L)
  • The "optimal" result they got was with 30 mg/L

Caveats:
  • They used three varieties of Oriental tobacco, so the results may not translate to other varieties of tobacco
  • They tested six samples of each quantity on each tobacco, which may or may not be statically sufficient
  • They flue-cured the tobacco, because, I suppose, it is faster to get some results. (I don't.)

Then, curious about how much chlorine I used when watering the plants (with the city tap water), I contacted the city, and they told me that the chlorine content was 0.80 mg/L when the water got out of the treatment plant. Much less than the recommended maximum quantity of 5 mg/L by the WHO.

Assuming that
  • 0 mg/L -> not cool
  • 30 mg/L -> cool
  • Tap water Cl content is closer to 0 mg/L than it is to 30 mg/L
  • Soil will absorb some (source -- I agree, it may not be a good source)
  • Letting chlorinated water sit for some time allow the evaporation of chlorine ("common knowledge")
  • One does not fertilise with high Cl content

I conclude that one does not have to concern themselves at all about the content of Cl in their tap water when they water their tobacco plants (unless the plants absolutely need a lot of water because they're in the middle of the desert), and that, in fact, if their fertiliser does not contain Cl, it is beneficial for their tobacco plant.

Thoughts?



On a side note, I found this part interesting; it means that (depending on how you feed your plan in chlorine, and how you harvest the tobacco, top-leaves vs bottom-leaves chlorine content will not be the same):

The highest concentration of chlorine is found in the lower leaves, and it decreases progressively to the top of the plant (data not shown). This could be explained by the fact that chlorine accumulates in plant tissues as they age, and as a result the content of chlorine in older lower leaves was higher than in younger upper leaves (Metochis, Orphanos 1990, Flower 1999). Contrariwise, Karaivatzoglou et al. (2006) reported that in Oriental tobacco harvested in five primings at weekly intervals, the leaf chlorine content was highest in the upper leaves and decreased gradually from the upper (fifth priming) to the lower leaves (first priming) of the plant. The same authors explained that this discrepancy is probably related to the harvesting method used, with chloride added continuously to the soil with irrigation water, resulting in higher chlorine accumulation of upper leaves than the lower leaves.
 
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