[TFortunato]

Sorry if I was unclear in my statement. I assumed, without access to the article, that this release is using "Tobacco" loosely to mean "some sort of Nicotiana", likely Nicotiana Benthamiana. Calling N. Benthi "Tobacco" is something I've seen in other press releases and popular descriptions of plant research.

Definitely not trying to suggest it's the only model plant! Like you said, Arabidopsis is huge, and there are other plants used commonly as well. Just pointing out that using N. Benthi / "Tobacco" in research is def not uncommon for some kinds of plant research. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18616398/

All that said, I'm not a plant biologist! I'm just an engineer who happened to work for a bit of time in Biotech, and is trying to continue learning about that field on the side, so feel to take my thoughts on this with a grain of salt or 2!