Tobacco smoke is killing thousands of people every year and injuring hundreds of thousands more every day, while many smokers find it difficult to cease smoking despite their knowledge of ill health effects. In this case, flue-cured tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) production still exists.

However, the arable lands for tobacco production become more valuable due to increasing population, environmental pollution, and the demand of economic profits. Shandong province used to grow the most flued-cured tobacco (Nicotiana tabacumL.) according to planting area in China. 50% of total tobacco leaf sales in China were from Shandong in the early 1950s. But this proportion has decreased to 3% in recent years. But currently, tobacco leaf production is still very important in China due to its historical position and its non-replaceable of characteristics in Shandong. The question is, where is suitable for tobacco production in Shandong?

Researchers in the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA) and Tobacco Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences together assessed the land suitability for tobacco production in Shandong province. They integrated the fuzzy set model, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, and GIS technique to create land suitability map. The assessment used 20 factors as suitability parameters, including climatic condition, soil type and nutrient characters, and topography data.

Through in-depth scientific research and analysis, they found that lands in western part of Shandong were more adaptable to different conditions than the Eastern region, which is more close to the Yellow Sea. Throughout the province, 65.12% of the land was highly suitable for tobacco production in term of climatic condition. For soil nutrient condition, only 19.66% was unsuitable. As to topography, 61.71% of the total area was highly suitable. Overall, almost 30% of the total area was highly suitable for tobacco production(Fig.1).

Meanwhile, Ecological characteristics of Shandong tobacco growing area were described comprehensively and systematically, including distribution of tobacco planting regions, climatic resource, soil type and soil parent material, soil nutrients, and current situation of flue-cured tobacco production.

"Despite the research data, we successfully designed an information system on ecological suitability and quality assessment of flue-cured tobacco in Shandong province during research,” said researcher ZHANG Jiuquan. “The system can carry out accurate statistical analysis and display final results based on small area of the assessment units, which provides powerful assistance for search and display of ecological suitability and quality of flue-cured tobacco in Shandong, and is a great decision support tool for tobacco production."

This study was supported by the Tobacco Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Details can be found at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168169915001118.

Fig.1 Map of land suitability for tobacco in Shandong (Image by ISA)