are familiar, indeed, with these effects, but there is something very remarkable in them. That ease should be procured by the juice of a poppy! that the wonderful mind should be influenced by a cause so apparently insignificant I The great John Hunter exclaimed, Thank God for opium! and it is an undoubted blessing that the Creator should have permitted such an antidote to the sufferings ot mank...

This paper examines the recent growth of the opium economy in North Eastern Afghanistan. A detailed analysis of one village in Badakshan Province reveals profound changes in the local economy and social institutions. The paper describes two major shifts in the local economy (1) the switch from wheat to poppy cultivation (2) the shift from the livestock trade to the opium trade. It then examines...

We have previously demonstrated that increases in cytosolic free Ca2+ are triggered by the self-incompatibility (SI) response in incompatible Papaver rhoeas (the field poppy) pollen. However, one key question that has not been answered is whether extracellular Ca2+ may be involved. To address this question, we have used an ion-selective vibrating probe to measure changes in extracellular Ca2+ f...

The effort of this work was to prove whether there exists any relation between stress factors caused by content of cadmium and zinc, and content and composition of opium alkaloids codeine, morphine, narcotine (noscapine) and papaverine contained in poppy seeds and capsules (Papaver somniferum L.) in 14 samples of 8 varieties cultivated in 8 localities in 2003.

.................................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................... iii List of Tables ................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures ...................

We model the economic incentives surrounding opium crop production in Afghanistan. Specifically, we examine the impact of eradication policies when opium is used as a means of obtaining credit, and when the crops are produced in sharecropping arrangements. The analysis suggests that when perfect credit markets are available, an increased risk of eradication will lead to less land being allocate...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Comparative studies of closely related taxa can increase understanding of adaptations and changes in seed dormancy and germination preferences in an evolutionary perspective. For such studies, a method to describe and compare the performance of taxa in a general way is needed. The germination ecology of four Papaver taxa was studied with the aim of describing and comparing t...