Tasmania is the world’s largest producer of opium alkaloids for the pharmaceutical market. The area sown to poppies is close to 20,000 ha, and the industry is one of the larger employers in the State. The application of science and technology has been critical to the development of the poppy industry. High yielding varieties and efficient production methods allow the Tasmanian industry to compe...

Over the course of human history, it has been common to use plants for medicinal purposes, such as for providing relief from particular maladies and self-medication. Opium represents one longstanding remedy that has been used to address a range of medical conditions, alleviating discomfort often in ways that have proven pleasurable. Opium is a combination of compounds obtained from the mature f...

Meconopsis Viguier (Papaveraceae) is an iconic genus of alpine forbs that includes medicinal and ornamental species. This study extends previous phylogenetic analyses of Meconopsis, using ITS sequences representing all the major Meconopsis clades. Phenotypic traits are also analysed for all described species. Our results show that Meconopsis evolved as a ≥ octaploid clade, with considerable int...

The Papaver L. plant (Papaver decaisnei) has ethnobotanical records in many countries including Iraqi Kurdistan. current study investigates the methanol (99.9%) extracts (10 μg/mL) of roots, leaves, and flowers decaisnei terms phytochemistry by gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometry GC-MS, vitro antioxidant activity radical scavenging reducing power assays, finally, anticancer actions as IC5...

The inhibitory effects of blueberry leaves on the proliferation of adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) cell lines have previously been reported. A comparison of blueberry leaf extracts from different cultivars and seasonal variation were investigated regarding their effects on ATL cell line proliferation. The inhibitory effects of 80% ethanol leaf extracts from different blueberry cultivars collected f...

Opiates such as morphine and codeine are mainly obtained by extraction from opium poppies. Fermentative opiate production in microbes has also been investigated, and complete biosynthesis of opiates from a simple carbon source has recently been accomplished in yeast. Here we demonstrate that Escherichia coli serves as an efficient, robust and flexible platform for total opiate synthesis. Thebai...