Abstract: To overcome the shortcomings of traditional control means in tobacco strip dryer, a system based on multilevel hierarchical control was developed, which was composed of three levels:base temperature optimizing module (organization level), moisture content controlling module (coordination level), and hot air temperature single loop PID control (execution level). The steam valve was regulated by comparing the actual temperature with the set value at each drying section to control hot air temperature, and moisture content was stabilized by moisture content control module and PID control. Under head and tail tobacco drying mode, a database relating steam valve opening to different tobacco grades was established to be extracted and executed by PLC. Under normal drying mode, a database relating hot air temperature value in each section to different tobacco grades was established to be extracted and executed by PLC. The results showed that:1) The system could automatically identify the state of strips during drying, and adjust the hot air temperature in each section separately and accurately control moisture content in dried strips. 2) Comparing with traditional control system, its new control system reduced the deviation of hot air temperature at head and tail tobacco drying mode from 5℃-15℃ to 1℃, decreased the amount of head and tail tobacco with unqualified moisture content from 2 000-3 000 kg to less than 300 kg, increased the proportion of properly dried strips from less than 90% to more than 95%, and the standard deviations of moisture content in strips in cooling section and in finished strips were controlled under 0.5% and 0.25%, respectively. The processing quality of strips was promoted effectively.