Effect of different combined moistening and redrying treatments on the physicochemical and sensory capabilities of smoking food tobacco material

Abstract

Smoking food tobacco material include flue-cured tobacco leaves, expanded stems, and reconstituted tobacco sheets. As the main raw material in the cigarette industry, the quality of flue-cured tobacco leaves is very important to the smoking food products. The effects of different combined moistening and redrying treatments on the physicochemical and sensory changes of flue-cured tobacco leaves have been systemically studied. This work has demonstrated that the steam moistening and low-temperature slow redrying (SM–LTSR) processes can improve the moisture content and color uniformity of tobacco leaves (p < 0.05). More importantly, the degradation of colorant and polyphenol precursors in tobacco leaves can be reduced for different redried lamina, and the average degradation amounts can be decreased by 30.63 and 22.41%, respectively. The total amount of volatile compounds can be decreased by 9.61% in comparison with the steam-water mixing moistening and high-temperature redrying (SWM–HTR) processes. We conclude that the mid-high-grade tobacco leaves should be processed through the SM–LTSR treatments to improve the color brightness, quality stability and retain flavor, while the low-grade tobacco leaves should be processed through the SWM–HTR processes to improve the processability, aftertaste and remove the offensive odor in actual threshing and redrying. This work has formed the suitable processing methods for different qualities of tobacco leaves and has laid the theoretical foundation for the quality improvement and flavor preservation of tobacco leaves.