editorial comment To the illiterates running the DEA, that's called R&D....

Colombian police have identified a genetically modified and super-hardy coca "tree" that yields up to eight times more cocaine than a traditional shrub.


The discovery, detailed in a counter-narcotics police intelligence dossier obtained by the Financial Times, underscores the lengths to which Colombian producers are going to outsmart the US in its efforts to curb the drugs trade.

"In their search for greater profits, drug-traffickers appear to have entered the world of genetically modified crops," the dossier says, referring to a new variety of coca found in the remote Sierra Nevada in northern Colombia.

The government of President Alvaro Uribe, aided by US companies such as Dyncorp, is striving to end Colombia's long-held status as the world's biggest cocaine producer. Its main tool is aerial fumigation of illicit crops with a potent herbicide. But while official figures show that since 2000 the area under cultivation in Colombia has almost halved to about 212,000 acres, coca productivity per acre appears to be rising.

With the help of foreign agronomists, the police say, traffickers have developed a leafier strain of plant that grows to 9ft, at least twice the height of the traditional shrub. The size and strength of the plant makes it resistant to herbicides. More important, the modified coca contains about four times more cocaine alkaloid.

Coca bushes are tended by peasant farmers who harvest the leaves and sell them to Colombia's guerrilla and paramilitary armies. The paramilitaries convert the leaves to a paste and then pure cocaine before selling it to groups specialised in smuggling and money-laundering.

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