Journal of Applied Botany and Food Quality 92, 336 - 342 (2019), DOI:10.5073/JABFQ.2019.092.045 1Centre of Applied Studies for the Sustainable Management and Protection of Mountain Areas (CRC Ge.S.Di.Mont.), University of Milan, Edolo (BS), Italy 2Department of Health, Animal Science and Food Safety (VESPA), University of Milan, Milan, Italy 3Department of Sciences and Technological Innovation (DISIT), Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, Alessandria, Italy 4Department of Agriculture and Forestry Science (DAFNE), Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy 5Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Production, Landscape and Agroenergy (DISAA), University of Milan, Milan, Italy Quality traits of saffron produced in Italy: geographical area effect and good practices Luca Giupponi1, Giulia Ceciliani1, Valeria Leoni1,*, Sara Panseri2, Radmila Pavlovic1,2, Guido Lingua3, Alfredo Di Filippo4, Annamaria Giorgi1,5 (Submitted: July 23, 2019; Accepted: October 3, 2019) Summary duce artherosclerosis (GHAFFARI and ROSHANRAVAN, 2019) and have antidiabetic potential (YARIBEYGI et al., 2019), making saffron an in- Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is the most expensive spice in the world teresting matter not only as a spice but also as functional food or as and is used in food, cosmetic and dyeing industries. Considering that herbal product. the production of saffron is increasingly widespread in medium-small Italian farms as well as the scarceness of information and studies re- In recent years demand for this spice has increased due to Asian popu- garding the quality of the saffron produced in Italy, the principal aim lation growth (ARSLANALP et al., 2019) and to the spread of Asian of this study was to investigate the quality of Italian saffron. Qualita- cooking worldwide. Today, world saffron production is estimated tive analysis was conducted in accordance with ISO 3632 1,2:2010- at about 200 tons per year (FERNANDEZ, 2004), and the principal 2011 considering 484 samples collected over four years (2015-2018). producers and exporting countries (Iran, Afghanistan and India) are In particular, moisture content, aroma strength (safranal), colouring located in Asia (OEC, 2019). Nevertheless, also in Europe there are strength (crocin) and flavour strength (picrocrocin) were assessed for some countries that produce this spice and Spain, Italy and Greece each sample, and whether spice quality varied according to the geo- are the most important of these. However, in the last century, Euro- graphical area where the spice was produced was also investigated. pean saffron cultivation areas have decreased production: in Spain, Qualitative analysis showed that the majority (84-93%) of the sam- saffron dropped from 6,000 ha in 1971 to 200 ha in 2004 (FERNAN- ples analysed are of the first quality category, regardless of the year DEZ, 2004), in Greece from 1,600 ha in 1982 to 860 ha according to of production. Moisture content and colouring strength are the fac- the most recent information (FERNANDEZ, 2004), and in central Italy tors that influence the quality of the spice most. Principal component they reduced from 300 ha in 1910 to 60 ha some years ago (GRESTA analysis showed that quality is not influenced by the geographical et al., 2008). On the contrary, an enormous increase has been regis- area where the spice was produced. Finally, some best agricultural tered in Iran and in other Asian countries (YASMIN et al., 2018). It practices to obtain a high quality saffron spice are reported. has been estimated that Iran produces 76% of total world saffron production annually (MILAJERDI et al., 2016). Iran has the widest area cultivated (47.000 ha), most of which is located in the Khorasan Keywords: Crocus sativus, picrocrocin, crocin, safranal, ISO 3632, province (EHSANZADEH et al., 2004). In Italy, the traditional culti- food quality vation areas of saffron are mostly concentrated in Sardinia (about 25 ha) and Abruzzo (about 6 ha) (GRESTA et al., 2008) and, although Introduction cultivated areas have decreased compared to past centuries in recent years, there has been renewed interest in saffron cultivation which Dried stigmas of saffron (Crocus sativus L., Iridaceae) are consid- has increased recently also in northern Italy (GIORGI et al., 2015a; ered the most expensive spice by weight worldwide (WINTERHALTER GIORGI et al., 2017; MANZO et al., 2015) in the Alpine macro-Region and STRAUBINGER, 2000). Crocus sativus is an autumn-flowering (EUSALP). Nowadays, Italy produce about 400 kg of saffron per geophyte extensively grown in the Near East and the Mediterranean year and is one of major saffron-importing countries together with basin since the Late Bronze Age (ZOHARY and HOPF, 1994; NEGBI, Spain, France, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzer- 1999). Saffron is a male-sterile triploid lineage that ever since its land (OEC, 2019). origin has been propagated vegetatively only. More precisely, it has The main reason why these developed countries produce a small been demonstrated that Crocus sativus is an autotriploid that evolved amount of saffron is due to the high requirement of meticulous man- in Attica by combining two different genotypes of Crocus cart- ual operations for its production and the high cost of labor. In fact, wrightianus Herb., a species occurring in southeastern mainland of the flowers ofC. sativus must be picked during the early hours of the Greece and on the Aegean islands (NEMATI et al., 2019). Triploid day, tepals must be carefully separated from stigmas and dried slowly sterility and vegetative propagation prevented afterwards segregation at a low temperature. Furthermore, this work is concentrated on a few of the favorable traits of C. sativus, resulting in worldwide cultivation days a year and on a few hours a day, and all the other activities (field of a unique clonal lineage (NEMATI et al., 2019). preparation, corm planting, weeding, etc.) are performed by hand Its long scarlet stigmas are highly valued for flavouring foods and for (HUSAINI et al., 2010). No irrigation, chemical fertilization or chemi- textiles and cosmetic dyeing industries (BASKER and NEGBI, 1983). In cal weed treatments are applied in some geographical areas in which addition, several studies have demonstrated that the chemical com- it is cultivated, making it a very interesting option for farms work- pounds of this spice act as anti-ulcer agent (TAMADDONFARD et al., ing according to an organic regime, which, in Italy and in Europe, 2019), play a role as anti-cancerogens (MILAJERDI et al., 2016), re- are in continuous expansion (WILLER and LERNOUD, 2017). Due to * Corresponding author its biological, physiological and agronomic traits, saffron can exploit Quality traits of saffron produced in Italy 337 marginal land and can be included in low input cropping systems, report, on a voluntary basis and using an online questionnaire cre- representing a viable alternative crop for sustainable agriculture in ated using Google Form, the annual quantity of spice produced in fragile agroecosystems such as those in rural and mountain areas order to estimate the average saffron production of the Italian farms (GRESTA et al., 2008). Italy has many abandoned rural areas, mostly involved in this study. in mountain areas, where C. sativus is and can be grown (GIORGI et al., 2015a; GIORGI et al., 2017). Moreover, it is a country of im- portant food traditions, and has many high quality foods that are ap- Quality evaluation pealing for the development of tourism (CORIGLIANO, 2003). Some In order to determine the quality of saffron produced in Italy the Italian traditional dishes are prepared with saffron (such as “risotto samples collected were pulverized using MM400 vibrational mill alla milanese” and “bagoss” cheese (GIORGI et al., 2015a; GIORGI et al., (frequency: 30 Hz; time: 1 minute), then moisture content and the 2017; MANZO et al., 2015) but currently there are few and fragmen- amount of picrocrocin (flavour strength), safranal (aroma strength) tary data about the quality of saffron produced in Italy today, despite and crocin (colouring strength) were measured according to proce- the fact that this aspect is of fundamental importance for the start- dures established by ISO 3632 1,2:2010-2011. These analyses were up and promotion of unique and successful local agro-food chains performed each year (from 2015 to 2018) two months after the col- (GIUPPONI et al., 2018a). For this reason, the aims of this research are: lection of the flowers and drying of the stigmas. Moisture content • To evaluate the quality of saffron produced in Italy during the last was determined by weighing 500 mg of dried powder saffron and four years (2015-2018) according to the procedures established by incubating it in an oven for 16 hours at 103 ± 2 °C. Each sample was ISO 3632 1,2:2010-2011 that evaluate the concentration of the three later weighed and moisture content (wMV) was calculated by the main metabolites responsible for saffron colour, flavour and aroma: following formula: crocin (C44H64O24), picrocrocin (C16H26O7) and safranal (C10H15O) wMV = m0−m×100m0% respectively. These analyses were conducted considering about where m0 is the mass, in grams, of the test portion before incubation 100 samples for each year as well as their geographical area of and m1 is the mass, in grams, of the dry residue after incubation. production in order to highlight possible qualitative differences Amounts of picrocrocin, safranal and crocin were determined by (PARIZAD et al., 2019). UV-Vis spectrophotometric analyses. 500 mg of the powdered saf- • To estimate the average amount of spice produced by Italian farms fron was transferred into a 1000 ml volumetric flask and 900 ml of in 2018 in order to show how much farmers invest in saffron pro- distilled water was added. After stirring with an electromagnetic duction nowadays. agitator (Falc 60) for 1 hour at room temperature (20 °C), the solu- • To suggest advice and/or best practices useful for farmers to im- tion was made up to 1000 ml with distilled water and filtered.