Human Flower Project
Orrington, MAINE USA
Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA
Princeton, MAINE USA
Friday, May 14, 2010
Afghan Poppies: Blight and Blame
A fungal outbreak is expected to kill at least a third of this year’s crop of opium poppies in Afghanistan. Fingers are pointing and prices are on the rise.
A child harvests opium poppies in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan under guard of Marines, April 2010
Photo: Asmaa Waguih for Reuters
News outlets on several continents this week have been reporting a massive blight in Afghanistan’s poppies, the problem so widespread it may kill a third or more of this year’s crop. These Afghan plants are the source for 75% of the world’s heroin—and 95% of the heroin in Europe.
The New York Times reported that the poppy killoff is due to a “mysterious disease”; other sources have confirmed it’s a fungal infection, thus far unspecified.
We’d thought of Papaver somnaferum as an especially hardy plant, but now learn that it’s prone to all kinds of problems: bacterial, viral, nutritional, and seed-borne. This excellent site out of India describes many poppy ailments, two common fungal diseases first: Downy mildew “appears annually on the crop from seedling stage to maturity in opium poppy growing areas of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan,” and Powdery mildew, (Erysiphae Polygon), “caused severe damage to opium crop in Rajasthan in 1972.”