STUDY OF COLOURING, AROMATIC STRENGTH AND BITTERNESS OF SAFFRON (CROCUS SATIVUS L.) CULTIVATED IN THE UK

Ideally, planting of saffron in new areas is a key resolving question of farmers which this article is a contribution of premier source of needed information about quality of saffron in the UK. Colouring and aromatic strength and bitterness of saffron (Crocus sativus L.) cultivated for the first time in the East Midlands in the UK were determined by different methods and compared with those values of Iranian and Indian saffrons. Different approaches were performed including colourimetery (Hunter Lab), UV-visible spectroscopy (ISO 3632-2003) and APCI-MS (Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionisation - Mass Spectroscopy). The results showed that the colouring parameters (L, a, b and chroma values) of saffron powder were relatively lower than of those parameters of 1% w/w saffron in water for all samples. The chroma (an indication of colouring strength) data of saffron solutions (1% w/w) from the three countries were in the following order: India > Iran > UK. Also a good correlation (R² 0.84) was found between the chroma and colouring strength values. Similarly, mean aromatic strength values were the same order as colouring strength values, however, mean bitterness value of Iranian saffron was greater than that of Indian saffron followed by UK saffron. The release of safranal from aqueous solutions (1% w/w) of saffron under static headspace concentration showed that release of safranal from Indian saffron solutions was significantly (P<0.01) higher than that of Iran and UK saffron solutions, respectively. Overall, in terms of colour and flavour levels, there was a good correlation between the orders of origins of all three saffrons.