Poly Tray Seedling Production

A tray nursery technique has been developed and standardized to produce healthy tobacco seedlings to overcome disease problems and to preclude transplantation shock. The technique is simple and entails sowing tiny tobacco seeds on coconut coir pith compost and transferring the young seedlings of about 20-25 days to poly-trays for raising them on the growth media with standard nutrient and watering schedules. The tray nursery seedlings take about 60-65 days from sowing to transplanting. Tray nursery seedlings offer the unique advantage of ensuring crop uniformity with minimum gap fills and consequently increased cured leaf yield and quality as against the seedlings grown under conventional raised soil-bed nursery.