Meeting Held on Execution of Medium Aromatic Tobacco Development Project

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online 04/09/2012

The leadership group designated by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) to oversee the execution of a project of developing characteristic high-quality medium aromatic leaf tobacco held its second meeting on the work of execution of the project for 2012 in Wuhan City of central China's Hubei Province on March 21. The meeting was intended for better promotion of the work of executing the project in 2012. The project of developing characteristic high-quality medium aromatic leaf tobacco was officially started in April 2011, under directly leadership by the leadership group formed by the STMA for overseeing fulfillment of major exclusive projects for development characteristic high-quality leaf tobacco. The project is undertaken by commercial enterprises of the tobacco industry in the eight provincial-level Chinese regions of Guizhou, Hubei, Shandong, Chongqing, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Hunan; Guizhou Provincial China Tobacco Industry Corporation; and relevant scientific-technological research institutes, under joint organization by Guizhou Provincial Tobacco Science Research Institute and Hunan Provincial China Tobacco Industry Corporation. The project is intended to define the methodology for evaluating the quality, styles and characteristics of medium aromatic leaf tobacco; accurately define the characteristics of medium aromatic leaf tobacco; specify the formation mechanisms, integrate complete sets of production and processing technologies; realize development of scale; establish systems for guaranteeing the production and supply of raw materials of characteristic high-quality medium aromatic leaf tobacco; meet the demand for developing Chinese-style cigarette brands; and provide scientific bases for decision making by the STMA on the distribution of high-quality leaf tobacco producing regions across China over an estimated period of five years. The project is also designed to provide bases for establishing a number of characteristic high-quality medium aromatic leaf tobacco production bases in the eight provincial-level Chinese regions with a total annual output of 10 million dan (500,000 tons), which will powerfully contribute to promoting the capacity of the tobacco industry to guarantee the supply of high-quality raw materials for cigarette production to a higher level. In 2011, the units designated to execute the project actively made performances in fulfilling the project in line with the spirits of the relevant official documents of the STMA, with general progress smoothly made in executing the project. In particular, effective progress was made in research for evaluation and definition of styles and characteristics, ecological basic research, research for selection and utilization of characteristics species, research of technologies for crucial growing and concoction, research of substance metabolism, etc, with the making of initial successes. It was proposed at the meeting that in 2012, the units designated to execute the project should, in accordance with the research guideline of "overall planning of research subjects on the basis of development of aroma types, and fulfillment of research subjects in the interest of developing aroma types", and in light of the working requirement for taxonomic research, staged execution, joint solution of difficult technical problems and dynamic readjustment", manage to further improve their plans for executing the project, with improvement of the quality of annual research for the project to a higher level as the core, in order to qualitatively and quantitatively fulfill all tasks of research. Enditem