Abstract: To investigate the soft characteristics of flue-cured tobacco leaves and its relationships with the main physicochemical indexes of tobacco, stepwise regression and path analyses were carried out between the softness and physical properties or chemical composition of 300 flue-cured tobacco leaf samples from 50 main tobacco-planting areas in China. The results showed that: 1) The softness value of flue-cured tobacco leaves ranged from 8.47 to 434.61 mN with a wide variation among leaves from different stalk positions in the rank of upper leaves>middle leaves>lower leaves. 2) The softness of flue-cured tobacco leaves differed significantly among the five areas (southwest area, southeast area, Huanghuai area, area in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and northern area). The upper, middle and lower tobacco leaves from Huanghuai area had the highest softness value, indicating their inferior softness. The softness values of upper leaves from the other four areas had no obvious difference. The softness values of middle and lower leaves in southeast area and the areas in the upper and middle reaches of Yangtze River were significantly lower than those from the other areas, which indicated that their softness was better. 3) The softness of flue-cured tobacco leaves closely correlated to its main physicochemical indexes, especially to the total sugar, reducing sugar and potassium in tobacco leaves with the highest correlation coefficients of 0.704, 0.695 and 0.559 respectively. Therefore, total sugar, reducing sugar and potassium were three important physicochemical indexes associated with the softness of flue-cured tobacco leaves.