Influences of cold atmospheric plasma pretreatment on drying kinetics, structural, fractional and chemical characteristics of tobacco leaves

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) treatment is a promising technology for the processing of agricultural products. The effect of cold atmospheric plasma pretreatment on the drying rate and quality of tobacco leaves (Virginia 202) during natural drying were studied. Naturally dried tobacco leaves were analyzed for their microstructural changes, fractional composition, and chemical composition. It was observed that cold atmospheric plasma pretreatment reduces the duration of natural drying of tobacco leaves by 37.7% and 19.5% for a leaf vein and for entire lamina of a leaf respectively. Along with that, a positive effect on increase in fiber yield during fractional analysis was shown for CAP pretreated tobacco leaves. Chemical analysis determined that CAP pretreatment of tobacco leaf improved the carbohydrate:protein ratio, increased the Schmuck’s value from 0.8 to 1.3 when processing tobacco leaf veins, but reduced the Schmuck’s value to 0.3 when processing the entire lamina of tobacco leaf. It is shown that nicotine content of dried tobacco leaves can be decreased by CAP treatment and controlled by applying to whole leaf or leaf vein only. The obtained data show that technology of cold atmospheric plasma pretreatment, in particular, when processing the vein (midrib) of a tobacco leaf has a promising application in industry, as it can significantly reduce the drying time of the leaves and affect the qualitative composition of the final product obtained in result.