Quite. Its just that there is a huge difference between world hunger coming in famine grade, and the continued need to work hard to produce the food. Efficient food productivity and the use of advanced technology to tweak the genetics of food and medicinal crops (E.g wheat, Where When
Al Swearengen (1947) Lestat (214) + Well said In topic Today at 05:51:46 PM
Trigger 11 (408) Lestat (214) + and the opium poppy respectively. GM grain is old hat now, although still room for improvements of course, whilst in the case of the opium poppy, there are now both very efficient high morphine producer poppy strains going, I've grown some of them myself actually, although I regrettably do not have access to some of the proprietary superstrains used by big pharma, but some specifically intended to be high yielding ones with a very high proportion of morphine in the alkaloidal fraction once it is extracted by means of not even bothering to lance the pods, but rather, to simply run both poppy pods and chopped up poppy straw through a big blender, and then soak the resultant mush in dilute acidic solution, such as hydrochloric, in a mix of mostly methanol, about 70-80 percent, and the rest H2O, this makes it far easier to evaporate and concentrate the solution of alkaloids. And avoids the latex oxidizing so much and going brown, so one gets a nicer, cleaner product with less work done. Then evaporate the acidic H2O until most of the methanol is gone, after first letting it settle out, so the plant fiber and bits of crud settle to the bottom, then pour through coffee filters or lab filter paper, decolorize if need be with a little activated carbon. Then evaporate the methanol until there is mostly H2O left containing a concentrated solution of poppy alkaloids.
Addition of slaked lime, calcium hydroxide in suspension reacts with the phenolic -OH groups of morphine, codeine and many, although not all opium poppy alkaloids, because unlike the hydroxyl moieties found in alcohols, phenols are quite acidic and can form phenoxide salts, aka phenates. Many calcium phenates are insoluble in H2O, morphine certainly is, and will precipitate out. The more concentrated the solution of alkaloids before adding the slaked lime the better, and easier to collect the morphine and other goodies on workup. But it literally snows out, cooling helps.
Doing multiple acid water pulls is obligatory of course, upon the slurry of poppy pod/straw mush, that way one gets the majority of the alkaloids. The calcium morphinate salt along with the bits of codeine, thebaine etc. then should be filtered again, after first decanting most of the H2O/remaining methanol or other alcohol through coffee filters or lab filter paper, and separated from the remainder, which is again filtered, the fraction of the alkaloids remaining will be caught in the filter, allow to dry. Then it can be carefully acidified with HCl (dilute) to give morphine hydrochloride, or the morphine and other goods can be dissolved in methanol as the phenate, treated with a solution of moderate strength ammonia gas in methanol to give the freebase, extracted with chloroform or methylene chloride (chloroform can be made from acetone, using bleach and caustic soda, in glass only containers, to perform a haloform rxn-gets quite hot, large ones should have both cold water and ice baths available in case of runaway), and the chloroform carefully distilled off or evaporated to give morphine freebase. Take this up in dry acetone with a stoichiometric quantity of bicarbonate relative to the molar amount of HCl that the acyl halides will give off when hydrolyzing, preferably adding half the base first, and then treat with either acetyl chloride, propionyl chloride to give either diamorphine (heroin) or dipropionylmorphine, slowly, in dry acetone solution, adding more base in portions. Bubbling will start, and continue for a while when the reaction is still going. When the bubbling ceases, the rxn is complete. Add a tiny bit more base off the tip of a knife, to see if it bubbles off more CO2 still then its still acidic, and should be tested with PH strips, adding knife-tip portions of bicarbonate until very slightly alkaline to red litmus, or titrated to neutral PH using an electric PH pen.
Then evaporate off the acetone using GENTLE heat, acetone boils at 56.05'C, which is whilst not damaging, a LITTLE bit warm IMO, I'd recommend about 40'C to 45'C and have moving air from a fan over the top of the container, to disperse the vapor. Kitchen extractor fan above a grill works, the fan removes the acetone vapor, whilst the grill can be used at a very, very tiny flame setting, fan going over too which will make the solvent go away faster if one hasn't distillation equipment to strip it and recycle it. The result is diacetylmorphine or the infinitely superior dipropionylmorphine-faster acting, longer acting, far far far better rush when IV'ed if propionyl chloride was used. Acetic anhydride or propionic anhydride work, although heating is needed and it is not nearly so fast and clean. Also, if these cannot be obtained or one doesn't wish to buy them, whilst I have never done it apparently the common, dirt cheap and unsuspicious glacial acetic acid can be used (no base needed) to selectively acetylate the 6-position of morphine to form 6-monoacetylmorphine which is meant to be rather good stuff. Never had 6-MAM though, yet. I assume also that glacial propionic acid would work to form the 6-monopropionate ester of morphine)
There are also industrial poppy strains now that have been engineered to produce nearly no morphine and most of the alkaloid content being thebaine, which is not an opioid itself, but rather, in tiny amounts it gives opium or poppy pod tea its uniquely perky, stimulating effects, but in larger quantities, it is a convulsant poison due to its being a strychnine-sensitive glycine receptor antagonist like strychnine is. These strains are used for producing oxycodone, buprenorphine IIRC and other synthetic opiates.
IIRC too, the gene sequences for the enzymes in the morphine biosynthetic pathway have been isolated and cloned into bacteria or yeast, to produce strains of morphine-producing microorganisms which enable production of this valuable painkiller and tasty delightful treat in tanks of growth media nutrient soup. This, I have not yet myself tried to do, although I really want to do it some day too.
