EFFECTS & USE OF TOBACCO
Introduction:
Tobacco is the common name of the Nicotiana and Solanaceae (nightshade) genus and of any product made from the cured plant leaves and is generally used in any product. Over 70 tobacco species are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used around the world.
Tobacco contains both nicotine and alkaloids, a particularly addictive stimulant. Dried cigarette and cigars, as well as pipes and shishas, are mostly for smoking. They can also be consumed as snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco and snus.
The Spanish and Portuguese words tobacco are derived from the English word tobacco. It is unclear the exact root of this word, but it is commonly believed to have originated from Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean, at least partially. In Taíno it was said that the roll of tobacco leaves is a type of L-shaped pipe for the sniffing of tobacco smoke, according to Bartolomé de las Casas, 1552 (as in compliance with Oviedo, the leaves themselves referred to as cohiba). But, possibly by coincident, related terms were used for certain medicinal plants in
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian from 1410.
Traditional use:
Tobacco were used in the Americas for a long time, and some production sites in Mexico date from 1400-1000 BC. Many American native tribes cultivate and use tobacco historically. Tobacco has been worn into bags as an easily tolerated market commodity in people from the Northeast Woodlands. Smoked socially and ceremonially, for example to adhere to a peace deal or a trade pact. Tobacco is regarded as a blessing from the Creator in some aboriginal cultures, with ritual smoke bearing
the Creator ‘s thoughts and prayer.
Biology:
Most tobacco plants belong to the Nicotiana herb family. It belongs to the Solanaceae genus, which is native to North and South America, Australia, South West Africa, and South Pacific.
Some night shades contain nicotine, a potent neurotoxin to insects, in varying quantities. Tobacco does, however, contain much more nicotine than most tobacco products. They have no tropane alkaloids, which are often toxic to humans and other animals, unlike many other Solanaceae plants.
Since it contains nicotines and other compounds such as Germacrene and anabasine, and other piperidine alkaloids, a number of these have improved their ability to feed Nicotiana species without damage. However, regardless of its other characteristics, tobacco is impalatable to many animals. For eg., although the cod looper is an overall pest, the survival of early larvae may be compromised by tobacco gummies and trichoms. Consequently, some tobacco plants (in particular N. glauca) have been established in some areas as invasive weeds.
Effects:
A local irritant, once used in the shape of a snuff, induces extreme sneezing; chewed, it increases the saliva
flow by irritating the mucous membrane of the mouth; it serves as a cathartic when inserted into the rectorum.
Nausea, vomiting, sweats and great muscle fatigue are developed in high doses. The nicotine alkaloid is a virulent toxin that is particularly upsetting in the digestive and circulatory bodies. It intersects the heart, induces palpitations, heart defects and artery contraction and is considered one of the causes of blood degeneration.
Nicotine in its pharmacological activity is pretty much like coniine and lobeline, and smoke’s pyridines change its effect very marginally.
Once used as a relaxant, nicotine is not used except in chronic asthma at times. Its active principle is readily absorbed by the skin, and serious, even fatal, poisoning, from a too free application of it to the surface of the skin has resulted.
The haze works on the brain which induces nausea, vomiting and somnolence.
Medicinal Uses:
It is used for medicinal purposes only when the other emets struggle to function as a sedative, diuretic, expectorant, arguing or sialagogue. In addition, for stubborn constipations attributable to bowel spasm, spasm logic urinary accumulation, hysteric convulsions and worms, as well as spasms caused by led, croup and fires of the peritoneum were benefited by the smoke infused into the rectum or leaf rolled into an assumption to produce bowel expulsion, moderating reactivity.
In order to inject smoke, it should be blew and inserted, made into plaster with Scotch snuff and lard, added to throat and breast for croup and spasms of the rima glottides, and seen to be very effective. As ointment for the skin diseases, a cataplasm of the leaves can be used.
Externally nicotine is an antiseptic. It is eliminated partly by the lungs, but chiefly in the urine, the secretion of which it increases. Formerly Tobacco in the form of an enema of the leaves was used to relax muscular spasms, to facilitate the reduction of dislocations.
Several plants of tobacco were used in genetics as models for organisms. Cells derived from Tobacco BY-2, derived from N. The ‘Bright Yellow-2’ tobacco cultivar is one of the most important methods of study into cytology in plants.
The role of tobacco in the research into callus culture and in the clarifying of the process by which kinetin
functions lay the foundations of modern farm biotechnology was pioneered. In 1982, Agrobacterium tumefaciens was the first geneically-modified plant to establish a tobacco plant immune to antibiosystems. Both genetically engineered plants were founded in this study.
Writer: Suraj Dhakal (Gauradaha Agriculture Campus, IAAS, TU)
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