The objective of the present study was to find out the relative influence of climate, soil and certain cultural practices on the variability of agronomic and chemical characteristics of Hungarian flue-cured tobacco. A 4 years study was conducted with four FC cultivars, including 199 FC tobacco fields. Factor analysis and regression analysis was used to reveal the relationship between and among the environmental factors and the characteristics studied. The variability of yield exceeded that of price. The variability of total alkaloids and reducing sugars reflected high sensitivity of these two components to the environmental conditions while total N appeared to be more stable. 82,8% of the variation of yield and 67,7% of the variation of the price was explained by the environmental factors studied. The same factors accounted for 84,2% of the variation of total N, for 75,3% and 80,2% of the variation of total alkaloids and reducing sugars, respectively. Climatic conditions of June and July proved to be decisive for most of the characteristics. Yield and nitrogenous constituents related positively to the effective temperature and negatively to rainfall, whereas price and reducing sugars were positively associated with rainfall and inversely with effective temperature. The ratio of rainfall and effective temperature (hydrothermal index) was used to characterize the climate of the season. The optimum value of the index is suggested. Of the soil characteristics only the organic matter content and mineral N correlated with price and chemical components, but not with yield. There was no significant correlation between NPK fertilizer rates and the characters studied. (Nitrogen )