Govt. to reboot dated Opium strategy

It plans to rope in private sector to boost yield of alkaloids

The Central government has decided to rope in the private sector to commence production of concentrated poppy straw from India’s opium crop to boost their yield of alkaloids, used for medical purposes and exported to several countries. Among the few countries permitted to cultivate the opium poppy crop for export and extraction of alkaloids, India currently only extracts alkaloids from opium gum at facilities controlled by the Revenue Department in the Finance Ministry. This entails farmers extracting gum by manually lancing the opium pods and selling the gum to government factories. The Ministry has now decided to switch to new technologies, after trial cultivation reports submitted last year by two private firms showed higher extraction of alkaloids using the concentrated poppy straw (CPS).