Saffron Agronomy and Technology
Year:2019 | Volume:7 | Issue:1|Papers Count:9

In order to evaluate the effect of last irrigation cut-off time and various fertilizer resources on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of Saffron (Crocus sativus L. ) flower, an experiment was conducted in a split-plot arranged as a randomized complete block design with three replications and 18 treatments in a four year research farm of Jihad ministry located in Lalezar village, Bardsir region, Kerman province, in 2015-2016. The experimental treatments were irrigation cut-off time (conventional time (5 May), 15 days before the conventional time (20 April) and 15 days after conventional time (20 May)) assigned to the main plot, and nutritional resources (cow manure 40 t ha-1, hen manure15 t. ha-1, vermicompost 10 t ha-1, humic acid 2 kg ha-1, and chemical fertilizer containing 200 kg ha-1 urea and 140 kg. ha-1 P and K) as subplot. The analysis of variance results showed that the effect of irrigation cut-off treatment was significant on all the quantitative traits, but the treatment had no significant effect on qualitative traits of flower. The results showed that the delay in irrigation cut-off led to a significant decrease in other traits. As, the highest number of flowers (41. 10 in m-2), fresh (145. 16 kg. ha-1) and dry (19. 41 kg. ha-1) weight of flower, fresh (11. 12 kg. ha-1) and dry (2. 02 kg. ha-1) weight of stigma were found in the earlier irrigation cut-off treatment (before the conventional time). The effect of fertilizer resources on all the studied traits was significant except for the values of picrocrocin and safranal. In all the irrigation treatments, vermicompost and cow manure significantly produced higher flower number and stigma yield than other fertilizer treatments. Dry stigma yield in chemical fertilizer (1. 91 kg. ha-1), hen manure (1. 57 kg. ha-1) and humic acid (1. 42 kg. ha-1) was significantly higher than control (1. 26 kg. ha-1). The highest (169. 7 nm) and lowest (163. 1 nm) amount of crocin were obtained in control and vermicompost treatments, respectively. In general, the results showed that irrigation cut-off in April with using vermicompost fertilizer had the best conditions for saffron cultivation in the Bardsir region of Kerman.

In order to evaluate the response of saffron to different manure, biological and chemical fertilizers, an experiment was carried out as split-plot based on randomized complete blocks design with three replications in the Research Farm of Gonabad Agriculture Jihad during 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 growing seasons. The main factor was 60 t. ha-1 manure, and no manure application, and sub factor included control (no fertilizer use), nitroxin (5 L. ha-1), biophosphorus (3 L. ha-1), biosulphur (5 kg. ha-1), humic acid (10 kg. ha-1), and chemical fertilizer (150, 100, and 100 kg. ha-1urea, triple superphosphate, and potassium sulfate). Experimental results indicated that the interaction effect of manure and biological and chemical fertilizers on fresh flower yield, fresh and dry stigma yield were significant. The highest fresh flower yield (181 kg. ha-1) was achieved by biophosphorus along with application of 60 t. ha-1 manure. Fresh stigma yield in the chemical fertilizer under manure application treatment showed the highest increase (mean yield of 10405 g. ha-1) while dry stigma yield due to biophosphorus application obtained the highest value (5351 g. ha-1). The effect of manure on corm traits was significant. Corm number per unit area and corm yield showed 19% increase in the second year due to manure application compared to control. Among biological and chemical fertilizer treatments, the highest value of corm number (440 corm. m-2) and corm yield (4401 kg. m-2) were obtained due to biophosphorus application. Based on the results obtained, the combined application of recommend manure with biological fertilizers especially biophosphorus under climatic and edaphic conditions similar to this experiment area is recommended.

Salicylic acid as a plant hormone plays an important role in regulating growth and physiological processes in plants. In order to study the effects of salicylic acid hormone and mother corm weight on saffron flowering properties, an experiment was conducted as factorial based on a randomized complete block design with three replications at the saffron research field of the College of Aburaihan, University of Tehran during 2016-2017. The first factor consist of salicylic acid in three levels (Normal, priming with 1 and 2 mM concentrations( and the second factor was weight of corm in two levels that consist of small corm (3-5 gr) and large corm (8-10 gr). The results showed that the effect of corm weight on fresh weight of flower, length of flower, fresh weight of stigma, length of stigma, fresh weight of pistil, length of pistil and qualitative characteristics of stigma were significant. The amount of these traits was higher in terms of use of large mother’ s corms. The effect of corm weight on dry weight of stigma was not significant. Interaction between salicylic acid and corm weight on all traits was not significant but the results of mean comparisons showed that the highest amount of fresh weight of flower (99. 5 kg. ha-1), dry weight of stigma (1. 45 kg. ha-1) and lowest days to emergence was 47 days after planting that related to salicylic acid in 2 mM. More amount of picrocrocin as a saffron flavor was related to salicylic acid in 1 mM. Crocin percentage in the priming treatment with 2 mM salicylic acid was higher than the other two levels; amount of safranal was high at 1mM. In summary, the results of this experiment indicated that planting large mother’ s corms with salicylic acid led to improvement of some quantitative and qualitative characteristics of saffron stigma.

In order to study the effect of different amounts of corms and planting depths of corms on flower and corm yield of saffron, an experiment was conducted in a factorial layout based on complete randomized block design with three replications at the Agricultural Research Station, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran during 2015-2016 growing seasons. The experimental treatments were all combination of four quantity of corms (7, 8, 9 and 10 t. ha-1) and three planting depths (10, 15 and 20 cm). The results showed that different quantity and planting depth of saffron corms had significant effects on most of the studied criteria. The results revealed that flower yield, stigma dry weight, number of flowers and replacement corms per square meter increased by increasing the amount of corm by 9 t. ha-1 and reduced planting depth by 10 cm. The maximum replacement corms yield was obtained in 8 t. ha-1 corm treatment which was 33. 25 percent higher than 7 t. ha-1 and 15. 99 percent was higher than 10 t. ha-1 corm treatments. The maximum and minimum replacement corms yield were shown in 10 and 20 cm planting depth, respectively. The higher number of replacement corms (173 corm in m2) were obtained in 10 t. ha-1 corms. Therefore, increasing the amount of corms from 7 to 10 t/ha will increase the number of replacement corms by 101 percent while there were no significant differences between the rest of treatments. Based on the low yield of saffron in the first year, it seems that increasing the amount of corm till the optimum range and reducing the planting depths of corms will increase saffron flowers yield in the first year and lead to production of bigger replacement corms for the next years. Hence, the optimum amount of corm and planting depths will increase the farmers’ income in the first year.

Saffron (Crocus sativus L. ) belonging to the Iridaceae family as a source of apocarotenoids is one of the most valuable spices and medicinal plants in the world. Because of the large size and high complexity of saffron genome, its sequencing remains a challenge. The arrival of nextgeneration sequencing technologies (NGS) has allowed rapid and efficient development for RNA sequencing. De novo assembly of transcriptome from short-read RNA-Seq data provides a great resource for the study of species without a reference genome. De novo assembly of the transcriptome has some unique challenges, particularly in the case of plants, which possess a large amount of paralogs, orthologs, homoeologs and isoforms. In this research, we attempted to compare the performance of de novo assembly tools including BinPacker, Bridger, Oases-Velvet and Trinity through consideration of quality metrics such as N50 length, the total number of contigs and alignment scores. The results of these analyses revealed that assembly using Bridger had a superior performance for saffron transcriptome, Oases suffered from relatively high chimera rates and redundancies which causes genes family with high similarity to be assembled into one transcript, Trinity performs worse than Bridger in the increase of false positives. Our comparison study will assist researchers in selecting a well-suited assembler and offer essential information for the improvement of existing assemblers.

Drying is one of the methods commonly used to increase the shelf life of medicinal plants and agricultural products. In this study, the drying process of saffron petals with a thin layer hot air dryer at five levels at 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 ° C and three air flows of 0. 5, 1 and 1. 5 m/s and their impacts on color parameter (amounts R, G and B) have been studied. By using machine vision system, color images of saffron dried petals were taken, and analyzed using image processing algorithms. Feature colors (RGB) were also obtained. In addition, the anthocyanin content, (using differential pH method) and L*a*b* characteristics were measured in order to determine the proper drying conditions of the samples. The data were analyzed using factorial experiment based on randomized complete design. The results showed that maximum RGB values were at the temperature range of 80 to 100° C, representing the greatest ratio and intensity of red, green and blue colors. Also, in this temperature range, the highest anthocyanin content (482. 21mg/l) and lowest color changes (Δ E) were obtained which indicate the relative desirability of this range for drying saffron petals.

Identifying optimal use of resources and in line with the production capacity of any land is an important step in achieving sustainable development while preserving the ecological system. The purpose of this study is to determine the quality, quantity and economic suitability of Torbat Heydarieh lands (Rokh plain) in the Khorasan Razavi province for wheat (Triticum aestivum) and saffron (Crocus sativus) cultivation. For this purpose, climate condition and soil properties in the study area were compared with requirements of wheat and saffron. Thus, qualitative suitability was determined by using the FAO method and GIS according to the parametric method of Kalogirou. Quantitative and economic evaluation was done based on actual yield in each agricultural unit and gross profit per unit area, respectively. The results showed that in this area despite the fact that climate index and yield potential are high, but qualitative suitability is moderate because of soil properties restriction, and this restriction is higher for saffron. The results showed that quantitative suitability class is equal or higher than qualitative suitability especially for saffron. Economic results showed that saffron was more profitable than wheat, but its expansion was restricted because of soil limitations. Therefore, its cultivation is not recommended. Performing corrective actions and improving soil properties in most units can increase production efficiency.

Mashhad plain is one of plains of the Khorasan Razavi province, which is one of the prohibited and critically prohibited plains. Due to unlicensed and unauthorized exploitation, the groundwater level has been gradually lowered and with a deficit of reservoir. Therefore, choosing the right strategies to reduce water consumption in this plain is necessary. Various policies have been proposed to reduce agricultural water consumption by researchers, including the policy of expanding crops with low water requirements such as saffron. This policy may be a good solution to tackling the increasing use of water. However, since different policies have different dimensions and effects, each policy must be explicitly examined for the impact of each policy, as well as its implications. In this regard, the consequences of the policy of extending the cultivation of saffron in three scenarios of allocating 5%, 10% and 15% of the total land area of the three counties located in the Mashhad Plain was investigated using a positive mathematical programming model. The results showed that with the application of this policy, in all three cities, the income of farmers will increase. However, water consumption will decrease only slightly in Binalud, and will not change in the other two cities. This is because with the expansion of saffron cultivation, instead of reducing the area of products with a high water requirement, the area of wheat and barley that requires less water than saffron is reduced. Therefore, no reduction in water consumption results. So, next the policy to increase the cultivation of saffron, along with the absence of a decrease in total surface area of wheat and barley was examined next. It was observed that the application of this policy would reduce the consumption of water in all three cities and increase the income of farmers.

Oil revenues play a major role in Iran's economy. In recent years, an average of about 60% of government revenues and 80% of Iran's export income have been from oil and gas. On the other hand, Iran as largest exporter of saffron has a significant part of the value of global exports of the product. Considering that oil revenues over the past years has been Iran's main source of income, it seems essential to investigate the shock impact of oil revenues on the export of the product. The present study examined the effect of shock of oil revenues on the export of saffron in Iran. In this regard, the data time series for 1974-2016 and Johansen Juselius and error correction model for Long-term and short-term relationships between the variables model were used. The results show that the real effective exchange rates in the long-term and short-term have a significant positive effect on the export of saffron in the country. Although index of ratio of domestic to world prices of saffron and saffron productivity were not statistically significant, their effect has positive and negative sign, respectively. Shock of oil revenues in the short term and the long term have a negative effect on the export of saffron as expected.