2012-03-13 17:47:43
When a person decides to add a few strands of saffron to paella or another exquisite dish, little can they suspect that, behind that delicate spice, more than 4,000 years of history are hidden. It is difficult to imagine the reasons that pushed a distant ancestor of humanity to extract the three red stigmas from a flower of great beauty to offer it to his gods, make ointments and medicines or add it to meals. The ancient tasks of saffron harvesting have been captured in Greek writings and paintings. On the Greek island of Santorini there is a 3,600-year-old fresco that represents two women collecting the saffron flower and in the palace of Knossos, on the island of Crete, another represents a man in the middle of harvesting.
Over the centuries, saffron culture spread throughout the world. The Arabs introduced its cultivation to the Iberian Peninsula and now saffron from La Mancha, the land of Don Quixote, has the well-deserved reputation of being the best in the world. The cultivation of saffron is very expensive, each flower provides three reddish strands that barely weigh 2 thousandths of a gram each. Between 150,000 and 200,000 flowers are needed to collect one kilogram of saffron and, in the lands of La Mancha, more than 1,000 square meters are needed to collect one kilo of spice.
It is striking that such a valuable flower is sterile, but that is how it is. The saffron flower contains stamens and its valuable three red stigmas but no seeds come out of them. Reproduction is through bulbs that are buried and dug up every three or four years to achieve a profitable harvest. In mid-October and November, for a few weeks, the flowers are picked every morning when they have not yet opened their petals, then the three stigmas are extracted by hand and dried.
The difficulties involved in the cultivation and harvesting of saffron, the competition from a series of natural and artificial coloring products and, why not say it, the fraud inevitably linked to a valuable product, caused a very significant decline of this spice during the century. past. The crop, with a tradition of many centuries in various places in Europe, was abandoned and with it a genetic wealth that is impossible to recover was lost.
Now something is changing thanks in large part to the efforts of people like our guest today on Talking with Scientists: Don José Antonio Fernández Pérez, Professor of Genetics at the Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineers of Albacete, of the University of Castilla – La Mancha and project manager Crocusbank
MORE INFORMATION:
The UCLM at the forefront in the scientific analysis of saffron
AGRI GEN RES 018: Genetic Resources of Saffron and allies
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