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Picture Source : AgricultureResource.com
Picture Source : OeyHQ.com
Picture Source : BioFob.blogspot.com
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines. It is most commonly used as a drug, and is a valuable cash crop for countries such as Cuba, India, China, and the United States.
Tobacco is a name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the
Solanaceae family (nightshade family) and for the product manufactured
from the leaf used in cigars and cigarettes, snuff, and pipe and chewing
tobacco. Tobacco plants are also used in plant bioengineering, and some
of the more than 70 species
are grown as ornamentals. The chief commercial species, N. tabacum, is
believed native to tropical America, like most nicotiana plants, but has
been so long cultivated that it is no longer known in the wild. N.
rustica, a mild-flavored, fast-burning species, was the tobacco
originally raised in Virginia, but it is now grown chiefly in Turkey,
India, and Russia. The alkaloid nicotine is popularly considered the
most characteristic constituent of tobacco but nicotine is not highly
addictive on its own. It is thought that the interaction between beta-carbolines and nicotine is responsible for most of the addictive properties of tobacco smoking.
The harmful effects of tobacco derive from the thousands of different
compounds generated in the smoke, including polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (such as benzpyrene), formaldehyde, cadmium, nickel,
arsenic, tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), phenols, and many
others.
