Oxford Facility Looks at Health Benefits From Tobacco
Source: WRAL.com
With a buyout, a possible state cigarette tax increase and rising health concerns, some farmers are swearing off tobacco as a way to make a living, but a research station in Oxford puts tobacco in a different perspective.
“Some researchers are trying to get protein out of tobacco that can be used in pharmaceuticals,” research technician Ted Woodleaf said.
Tobacco plants from all over the world are studied in Woodleaf’s greenhouse from diseases to reproduction.
“We get pollen from one plant on the artist’s brush, then we will go to another plant and then insert that pollen on the stigma of another plant,” Woodleaf said.
The flue-cured tobacco stalks are kept disease-free year-round in the name of research.
The research has been going on at the Oxford facility for 93 years, but things are about to change. The federal government hands over ownership of the facility to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture on March 18.
The prevailing attitude about tobacco is that it has no positive effects beyond the economic – it’s unhealthy, it kills the soil, and it contributes toward what is essentially a legal drug trade. I don’t disagree with any of these assertions, but I’ve always wondered what ecological niche was filled by tobacco before it was domesticated and bred into a cash crop. Natural selection will not result in a plant (or animal) that does not have at least some small ecological niche.
Tobacco is a flower, but when it is grown as a cash crop the flowering part is considered detrimental. As a result, farmers frequently “chop” the tobacco to remove the flowers and redirect the growth into the leaves. The language used in this article suggests that the research involves the tobacco flower, which for many years has been considered fit only for composting. It’s entirely plausible that there is some benefit associated with the flower that hasn’t yet been identified. In addition, the same genetic techniques used to develop the cash-crop version could likely easily be combined with modern biotechnology to develop something positive from tobacco.
Just about every tobacco farmer I’ve met would be ecstatic at such an idea, and would gladly sign on to research and development efforts. Even though prices are declining, tobacco still yields so much more per acre that, even with buyouts, switching to other crops can beggar a successful farmer to the point of public assistance. Redesigning and rebreeding the product into something so beneficial – and, as I said, the idea that there is nothing useful about tobacco makes no scientific sense – could prove to be the issue that brings tobacco country out of its current severe economic deprivation.