Crocus sativus

The Red-Gold Mystery

• Saffron is the world's most expensive spice, and is valued at a market price point ranging from $750 to $75,000 per kilogram (retail price).
• Preparations of culinary, medicinal and textile-based products from various parts of the saffron flower is diverse and founded upon 3,500+ years-worth of rich traditional uses. Saffron has the most medicinal uses of any other plant with 90+ known uses.
• Saffron is considered to be a superfood, and specialty, shoulder, low-input, and cash-crop.
• Saffron is a low-input agricultural crop that requires relatively minimal input of water, synthetic chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, and maintenance, in contrast to tomatoes.
• There are myriad uses of nearly all the plant parts of saffron, such as, but not limited to, the use of dried red stigma filaments in culinary and herbal medicines, violet petals as a garnish and in herbal medicines, and the yellow stamen as a rich source of pollen but also containing key phytochemical constituents of interest.
• Saffron flower harvesting occurs in autumn — this is typically a three-to-four-week period that occurs in September to November in the northern hemisphere and from March to May in the southern hemisphere when grown outdoors.
• Ancient Greco-Romans used saffron as an aromatic spice in Greek courts and theatres, while infused in to the water of Roman baths.
• There are three predominate chemical constituents that compose the quality of saffron, which are crocin (color/apocarotenoid), picrocrocin (taste/terpenoid) and safranal (aroma/terpenoid).
• It has been estimated that 85,000 farmers are employed in the Khorasan province of Iran to grow saffron, in contrast to the 16.8 million workers needed for the whole production cycle annually (see map below).
• It has been estimated that in order to produce one kg of saffron, between 158,000-300,000 flowers are required — however, another estimation of Spanish saffron gauged 173,250 flowers required for one kg.
• Sixty-plus different adulterants have been identified in adulterated saffron samples globally.
• Of the many human clinical trials that have been conducted on saffron, the top indications that standout for the red-gold spice are (1) mild to moderate depression, (2) age-related macular degeneration, (3) male and female sexual dysfunctions, and (4) premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
• One study has found that saffron is 16 times more water efficient than wheat.