The team of researchers have published a new paper in the journal
Scientific Reports which explains that besides being a provider of opium and opiates, “poppy seeds can be ground up and used to make cooking oil and porridge.” However, the answer to the question “where was the poppy plant domesticated” has been a botanical mystery until now. The team of scientists have concluded that the poppy plant is “unlike all other previously domesticated crops, like grains, legumes and flax, which were domesticated in south-west Asia.” On the contrary, the opium poppy was domesticated in the western Mediterranean, where
Papaver somniferum subsp. setigerum (DC.) Arcang, its assumed genetic descendant, still thrives in the wild today.