Effect of Lancing on Alkaloids Profile of Capsules in Opium Poppy

Abstract

The commercially important crop of opium poppy is grown for production
ofalkaloids. These alkaloids are now favoured to be extracted from dry
capsules due to constraint of manual labour rather than from latex as
practised earlier. However, due to presence of bound form of alkaloids ill
capsules, the process of extraction complicates. Hence, a method has been
developed for the extraction of alkaloids from the poppy straw and analysed
over HPLC. The lanced and unlanced dried capsules offour promising
varieties alongwith two control varieties, were analysed for the spectrum
offive major alkaloids by the metlwd developed by us. It was observed that
unlanced capsules have greater proportion of alkaloid contents in comparison
to lanced capsules. Hence, unlanced capsules of opium poppy can be used
for better production of alkaloids.