Nicotine Restriction Rules Require Decades of Research, Says Agriculture Ministry

Jakarta - The Head of the Seasonal Crops Group at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Directorate of Seasonal Crops, Yudi Wahyudi, has cautioned that efforts to reduce nicotine levels are not merely a regulatory issue but a scientific and agronomic challenge requiring up to 30 years. Yudi explained that from the upstream production side of tobacco plants, this timeframe is needed to provide certainty so that researchers at the National Research and Innovation Agency and the Ministry of Agriculture can discover low-nicotine varieties that remain robust in tropical lands and efficient for traditional farmers. “Without a transition period this long, the local industry is certain to collapse before the ideal seed is even finished being researched,” Yudi clarified in Jakarta on Monday. He explained that reducing nicotine levels in tobacco plants through traditional cross-breeding (non-GMO) requires a very lengthy genetic selection process. Each generation of plants requires one full planting season. To stabilise the low-nicotine trait without damaging the plant’s resistance to local pests, dozens of cross-breeding generations are needed. Furthermore, the nicotine content of local Indonesian tobacco (such as Kemloko in Temanggung or Mole in West Java) ranges from 3 percent to 8 percent due to volcanic soil factors and tropical sunlight exposure. He stressed that drastically altering nicotine levels is tantamount to changing the geographical identity of the commodity, which ultimately requires a natural adaptation period across generations of farmers. Yudi acknowledged that obtaining tobacco with a very low nicotine content of less than one percent, or equivalent to less than 10 mg/g in dry leaves to achieve cigarette smoke emissions of <1 mg, is the greatest biological challenge for Indonesian agriculture. “This is considering that the tobacco plant is a highly site-specific commodity, where the genetic interaction of the plant with the local climate and soil determines the final result,” he said. “Moreover, farmers will observe whether this low-nicotine and low-tar tobacco variety has a market or economic value equivalent to the local varieties they have been cultivating. Because farmers will look at the profitability aspect of cultivating this new tobacco variety,” Yudi explained. He further elaborated that agronomically and scientifically, reducing nicotine to such extreme levels can be pursued through three main pathways: conventional cross-breeding, which involves mating superior local varieties with strong physical characteristics with foreign varieties that are genetically very low in nicotine; modern genetic engineering (CRISPR gene editing), which involves switching off or deactivating the gene that produces specific enzymes in the roots where nicotine is produced before it is transported to the leaves; and modification of cultivation techniques (agronomy), which involves completely changing traditional planting methods, such as reducing nitrogen fertiliser, not performing topping, and maintaining precise water sufficiency to significantly suppress nicotine accumulation in the leaves. “In general, there is no pure local Indonesian variety that is below 1 percent. The majority of our chopped and kretek tobaccos (such as from Temanggung, Boyolali, or Garut) naturally range between 3 percent and 8 percent,” Yudi stated. Scientifically, Yudi continued, a 30-year period cannot provide an absolute guarantee that a single new variety can grow uniformly across all of Indonesia. “The inherent nature of tobacco is tied to the concept of Terroir (soil suitability, elevation above sea level, weather, and local micro-climate),” Yudi said.