Production Practices and Quality Assessment of Food Crops. Vol. 1

Saffron Quality 235
Figure 11. The saffron plant (after ISO standard 3632-1/1993).
to a quite uniform genetic material in spite of diversity in origin and morphological
differences of the plant parts. Thus, improvement of the genetic material is
restricted unless future breeding programmes involving fertile allies (e.g., C.
cartwrightianus, C. oreocreticus and C. thomasii) are carried out (Grilli Caiola, 1999)
or other fertilisation routes are explored (Chichiricco, 2000). Plant improvement has
been also attempted through irradiation of corms. Modernisation of saffron crocus
cultivation except for reducing labour and introducing mechanisation (Galigani
and Pegna, 1999) requires improved starting material. The use of gibberillins plus
other growth regulators when corms were dormant (June–July) accelerated formation
of more flowers (Azizbekova et al., 1978 and 1982; Kabdal and Joshi, 1978;
Farooq and Kaul, 1983; Chrungoo and Farooq, 1984; Chrungoo and Farooq, 1989)
and consequently of saffron itself. The effect of gibberellic acid is reported to
stimulate starch breakdown in favour of reducing sugars and pentoses (Chrungoo
and Farooq, 1989, 1991). Increase in leaf length, and the number of daughter
corms is reported after an overnight dipping of mother corms in an aqueous solution
(10–200 ppm) of 2,4-dichlorophenoxy acetic acid (Kabdal and Joshi, 1978). In
vitro corm production is another means for increasing the reproductive capacity
of the plant (Ilahi et al., 1987). Plessner et al. (1990) found that growth regulators
such as cytokinins, in particular zeatin, and auxin 2,4D are essential for develop-