In order to clarify the chemical properties of rainfall in typical tobacco areas in Chenzhou City, Hunan Province, and analyze its potential for soil and flue-cured tobacco planting, rainfall samples in 2020 were collected by rainfall instruments in Fangyuan Town and Aoquan Town of Guiyang County, and the chemical properties that are closely related to the quality of flue-cured tobacco were determined, such as pH, EC, total nitrogen (TN), nitrate nitrogen (
), ammonium nitrogen (
) and ion concentrations (K
+, Na
+, Ca
2+, Mg
2+,
, Al
3+,
, Cl
−,
). The results show that the pH values of rainfall samples at Fangyuan and Aoquan monitoring sites are in the range of 4.92 - 6.17 and 4.93 - 5.69 respectively, with an average of 5.27 and 5.27 respectively. The acid rain characteristic is very obvious, which is mainly dominated by
. The variation of rainfall EC has seasonal characteristics. EC is low from January to September, in the range of 6.09 - 56.72 and 11.83 - 30.93 μS/cm respectively, besides, it is high from October to December, in the range of 102.63 - 174.60 and 25.05 - 86.37 μS/cm respectively. The annual deposition of TN was 22.19 and 20.76 kg/hm
2/yr respectively, which were higher than that in the western regions with less human disturbance, but lower than or equal to that in the developed agricultural regions in eastern China. The proportion of
in the annual deposition of TN was higher than that of
at two monitoring sites, with an average of 56.51% and 38.86% respectively. Ammonia volatilization from agricultural activities contributed more to rainfall nitrogen content. The ratios of ammonium nitrogen to nitrate nitrogen deposition at two monitoring points were 1.84, 1.81, 1.86 and 1.34, 1.46, and 1.29 during the whole year, summer and autumn, winter and spring respectively. The ratio is higher in summer and autumn than in winter and spring. The weighted average equivalent concentrations of the main ions at two monitoring sites were 238.88 μeq/L and 211.21 μeq/L respectively, and the orders of the ion concentrations were slightly different. Both the concentrations of
and
are higher, while Mg
2+,
and Al
3+ are lower.
,
and
are mainly from human activities with a contribution rate between 91.90% and 99.35%. Ca
2+ mainly comes from soil and ground dust, besides, Cl
− and Mg
2+ mainly come from marine sources and K
+ mainly comes from terrestrial sources. In general, the acidic rainfall and higher
concentration are beneficial to reducing the high pH value of soil in Aoquan tobacco area and improving the quality of flue-cured tobacco. Higher concentrations of
and
in rainfall are not conducive to the improvement of flue-cured tobacco quality, because of the high content of soil available sulfur in Chenzhou tobacco area and the characteristics of flue-cured tobacco’s preference for ammonium.