Technology

• Tobacco waste is a rich source for industrially and pharmaceutically important by-products like nicotine sulphate, solanesol and organic acids and Viable process technologies are developed for isolating these useful chemicals.
• Nicotine sulphate can be used as an effective insecticide for the control of the two major tobacco pests S. litura and Heliothis and is being exported to several countries like Japan and UK etc. It is reported that solanesol is an important basic material for manufacturing cardiac drugs.

• In the isolation method, the RNA was homogenized with phenol/chloroform and precipitated in ethanol. This isolation technique provided highly reproducible and good quality RNA within 2 h. Both yield and purity of RNA is increased; the RNA is suitable for use in further analysis techniques, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), reverse transcription, and northern blotting analysis.

Market

• Tobacco cultivation has become an industry, which has made great strides and is playing major role in Indian Economy. So much so India has now become the third largest producer of tobacco in the world, after U.S.A. and China.
• Worldwide 85% of cultivated tobacco goes to cigarette, but in India it is only 20%. Beedi is the most popular form in India. The sales of beedies total about 1000 billions as compared to only 5 billion cigarettes.

• Tobacco manufacturing in the EU/European Free Trade Association region keeps steady at an estimated 25% of global cigarette production. The EU is a net importer of raw tobacco and a net exporter of manufactured tobacco products, providing 20% of the world's supply.

• Some 130,000 U.S. farms grow tobacco, primarily in the southern states, and for many growers it constitutes their primary cash crop. The U.S. Department of Agriculture includes tobacco in its price support system, both because of its economic significance to the South--it is the seventh-largest U.S. cash crop--and because for many years it has been an important export commodity. American cigarette manufacturers also play a major part in the U.S. economy, earning millions from their domestic and their foreign sales.