The Relationship between Transplanting Dates and Maturity and Chromoplast Pigment and its Degradation Products for Tobacco in Central Henan

By adjusting the transplanting and harvest dates, we explored the relationship between the maturity of tobacco leaves and plastid pigment and the change of degradation product in the central region of Henan. The result showed that, with the increase of maturity after 30 d of tobacco leaf age, the content of chlorophyll and carotenoid in tobacco leaves had decreasing trend. Content of chromoplast pigment and its degradation rate in middle leaves were relatively high at May 6th during transplanting period, and upper leaves were relatively high at April 27th. Plastid pigment content after modulation, higher in middle leaves than in upper leaves, and it tended to decrease gradually with the delaying harvesting dates, but transplanting period had little effect on content of chromoplast pigment. Carotenoid degradation products in middle and upper leaves and content of neoplytadiene were the highest after delaying 5 d, which transplanted in May 6th. Reasonable transplanting dates and detaining the harvest time properly were beneficial to production of plastid pigment and improvement of its degraded products.