It's the cash crop of the Taliban and the scourge of Afghanistan - the country's intractable opium cultivation.
This year, many Afghan poppy farmers are expecting a windfall as they get ready to harvest opium from a new variety of poppy seeds said to boost yield of the resin that produces heroin.
The plants grow bigger, faster, use less water than seeds they've used before, and give up to double the amount of opium, they say.
No one seems to know where the seeds originate from. The farmers of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where most of Afghanistan's poppies are grown, say they were hand-delivered for planting early this year by the same men who collect the opium after each harvest, and who also provide them with tools, fertilizer, farming advice - and the much needed cash advance.
Afghanistan's poppy harvest, which accounts for most of the world's heroin, is worth an estimated USD 3 billion a year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Production hit a record high in 2014, up 17 per cent compared to the year before, as opium and the drugs trade continued to undermine security, rule of law and development, while funding both organised crime and the Taliban - often one and the same.
The trend is expected to continue in 2015, in part thanks to the new poppy seeds, according to officials tasked with overseeing the eradication of poppy crops.
This upcoming harvest in late spring is expected to surpass last year's country-wide record of 7,800 metric tonnes (8,600 US tonnes) by as much as 7 per cent and 22 per cent in Kandahar and Helmand provinces respectively, local officials said.
Experts say the Taliban, who have been waging war on the Kabul government for more than a decade, derive around 40 per cent of their funding from opium, which in turn fuels their insurgency.
Fierce fighting in recent months in poppy-growing regions shows the Taliban's determination to protect their trafficking routes and the seasonal workers who come to earn money at harvest time from government forces under orders to eradicate the crop.
Gul Mohammad Shukran, chief of Kandahar's anti-narcotics department, said the new seeds came with the drug traffickers, but he did not know exactly where from. They yield "better drug plants, which require less water and have a faster growth time."
"This is a big threat to everyone," he said, adding that Afghanistan's central authorities had failed to act on his warnings.
