Opium and its alkaloids

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Summer 2002 by Schiff, Paul L Jr

Production Of Opium

Cultivation of the opium poppy for the production of opium principally occurs in northern India in the regions of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The opium poppy, like all poppies, requires rich moist soil, plentiful sunlight, and a clear area in which to grow. Poppy seeds are sown in late fall or early winter (usually November) in well-cultivated fields. After the plants have emerged in the spring and reached a height of about 15 cm, the fields are thinned such that the remaining plants stand about 60 cm apart. Flowering occurs in April or May, with the capsules maturing in May or June. Five to eight capsules are normally present on each plant, and as the capsules ripen to about four cm in diameter, their color changes from bluish-green to yellow.

This signals the optimum time for latex collection, and the capsules are carefully incised horizontally (infrequently vertically) partially around their circumference one-at-a-time. A single three- to six-bladed knife or spiked instrument is used and workers move backwards in order to avoid direct contact with latex from the capsules that have just been incised. There are four-to-six such incisions and each incision is made sufficiently deep in order to incise the lactiferous ducts, but not so deep as to penetrate the endocarp, which would result in the latex flowing inward toward the center of the capsule. It is not necessary to incise all of these ducts (tubes) because they open into one another. A white latex exudes from the incisions, rapidly darkening to a brownish or blackish color on exposure to air. Each capsule may be incised four or five individual times over a period of the next several days. The morning following incision, the darkened solidified latex is collected via scraping with an iron scoop/trowel or knife prior to the heat of the day causing the latex to become sticky.

Upon collection of an appropriate amount of latex, the material is kneaded together into balls, wrapped in poppy leaves, and air-dried in the shade. Alternatively, the coagulated latex may be stored in metal or earthen pots with perforated bottoms, allowing drainage of a dark-colored fluid. If the bottoms are not perforated, the pots are stored at a tilt and turned over every ten days for drainage. Further processing then occurs at government collection stations where the crude opium is placed in rectangular pans and allowed to sit in the sun for about 1-3 weeks. Each pan contains about 35 kg of opium and is stirred with wooden paddles about every 30 minutes. The residual water content drops from about 30 percent to about 10 percent during this period, and the material is subsequently formed into 5 kg cakes that are shipped in polyethylene bags(3,6,8- 11).

Opium Poppy Seed And Straw

The opium poppy is also widely cultivated as a source of poppy seed and poppy "straw." When the plants have reached complete maturity, the leaves are dry and the seeds contain a maximum of poppy seed oil (an unsaturated fixed oil). The oil is obtained by expression, and the remaining poppy seed cake is crushed and used as a source of cattle feed. Poppy seed oil has been as a culinary salad oil, cooking oil, drying oil for use in art, and as a vehicle for various parenteral formulations(3,811).