Saffron

Saffron is the most expensive, finest, most aromatic, and renowned spice in the world, widely used in cooking, cosmetics, and healthcare. Most sources attribute its origin to Iran, which currently harvests over 99% of the world’s saffron. Iran is the largest exporter of saffron, while China is the largest importer.

The unique aroma, flavor, and vibrant yellow color of saffron come from compounds such as safranal (responsible for its fragrance) and crocin (responsible for its color). Advanced techniques like mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are used to detect counterfeit saffron.

Key Components of Saffron:

• Crocin: Provides the vibrant color.
• Picrocrocin: Responsible for the bitter taste.
• Safranal: Gives saffron its distinct aroma.
• Lycopene: A carotenoid also found in tomatoes.
• Beta-carotenes: Carotenoids also present in carrots.

Characteristics:

Saffron is a small, perennial plant, growing 10 to 30 cm tall. It has narrow, long leaves and produces one to three flowers per stem. The flowers have six purple petals (sometimes pink or lilac), three stamens, and a three-branched red-orange stigma. The stigma and style are the parts used as saffron, known for their fragrance and slightly bitter taste.

Bunch Saffron:

This type of saffron is the most basic and simplest type of saffron processing. If, during the cleaning and processing of saffron, after filling the flowers and separating the petals and stamens, we wrap all the saffron strands together with thread and dry them together, we have created one of the categories of saffron types.

Cluster saffron contains both red stigmas and white cream. Since this type of saffron has both cream and stigmas together, it is practically impossible to adulterate it. This type of saffron is known as grade 4 saffron in the National Saffron Standards Organization of Iran.

Because the cream takes longer to dry than the stigma, the stigma loses some of its color and aroma during the drying process; therefore, its quality is lower than other saffron categories. The color strength of this type of saffron is between 140 and 170. In this saffron, the three stigmas are not separated and are located next to each other.

This type of saffron has a lower and more affordable price than other categories of saffron.