Y1 (tobacco)

Y1 is a strain of tobacco that was cross-bred by Brown & Williamson to obtain an unusually high nicotine content. It became controversial in the 1990s when the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used it as evidence that tobacco companies were intentionally manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes. Y1 has also been investigated by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Y1 was developed by tobacco plant researcher James Chapin, for Brown & Williamson (then a subsidiary of British American Tobacco) in the late 1970s, with the approval of the president at the time, Jimmie Carter. Chapin, a director of the USDA Research Laboratory at Oxford, North Carolina, had described the need for a higher nicotine tobacco plant in the trade publication World Tobacco in 1977, and had bred a number of high-nicotine strains based on a hybrid of Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica, but they were weak and would blow over in a strong wind. B&W tested five strains on a farm in Wilson, North Carolina in 1983. Only two grew to maturity; Y2, which "turned black in the drying barn and smelled like old socks," and Y1, which was a success. B&W brought the plants to California company DNA Plant Technology for additional modification, including making the plants male-sterile, a procedure that prevents competitors from reproducing the strain from seeds. DNA Plant Technology then smuggled the seeds to a B&W subsidiary in Brazil. A 1991 industry document analyzing the potential of Y1 reported that it had been successfully grown in Brazil, Honduras and Zimbabwe but not Venezuela, and that it was both difficult to cure and susceptible to Granville wilt.

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