**1. Introduction**

Opium poppy (*Papaver somniferum* L.) has its importance as a plant based natural pain re‐ liever from the time dating back to early civilization till today. Its pain relieving properties had been described in various books of unani, allopathy and ayurvedic medication system. Today our pharmaceutical industries solely depend on opium poppy for their crude resour‐ ces for manufacturing of pain killing drugs. The medical practitioners around the world routinely prescribe important life saving drugs, are the secondary metabolites produced as a result of complex plant metabolism. The important life saving drugs are mostly derived from five major alkaloids viz., morphine, codeine, thebaine, noscapine and papaverine which are present in opium latex in ample amount [1]. According to a report from an inter‐ national organization i.e. WHO (World Health Organization), about 85% of the population in developing countries depend on herbal plants for curatives, medicinal and other medico related applications. India being one of the twelve mega biodiversity centers of the world is fully fledged with diverse array of herbal and medicinal plants which makes it "Botanical Garden of World". About 10,000 different medicinal plant species are found in India among which opium poppy occupies the highest place in terms of food (seeds) and pharmaceuticals (alkaloids). These valuable alkaloids are mainly extracted in India from green unripe capsu‐ les by making incision upto 1-2 mm in the epidermal wall of the capsule (Figure 1), but glob‐ ally it is extracted from the dried capsule which is called CPS (Concentrated poppy straw) system. In CPS system, the dried capsules along with eight inches of peduncle are harvested and seeds are threshed. The remaining husk is used to extract various alkaloids. The whole plant parts of opium poppy are valuable in terms of food, medicine, vegetable and as brew‐

© 2013 Kishore Mishra et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 Kishore Mishra et al.; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ages. The seeds of opium poppy are highly nutritious as it contains protein upto 24% and other vital nutrients beneficial for human health. The leaves of the plant are used as vegeta‐ ble in some places in the world. The seed oil of poppy is also important for health point of view due to having high percentage of linoleic acid (68%) which helps in lowering blood cholesterol level in human body and is also used in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in human system [2,3].

Red Latex Pink Latex

Figure 1. Capsule having brown and pink latex in opium poppy. **Figure 1.** Capsule having brown and pink latex in opium poppy.
