Golden spice saffron is a prominent crop of Kashmir valley of India. The present study focused on investigating the effect of regional variation on characteristic compounds (crocin, picrocrocin and safranal), of Indian saffron using Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy and chemometrics applied on spectral information enabled the discrimination of the regional production sites. Saffron samples were collected from eminent growing areas of Jammu and Kashmir (India) including Pulwama, Budgam, Srinagar, Pampore (Saffron Research Station at Dussu) and subsite of Srinagar (Agricultural institute). Coloring strength (crocin) varied in the range 143.33 ± 0.13 to 230.13 ± 0.11, flavor strength (picrocrocin) showed divergence in the range 61.92 ± 0.22 to 95.62 ± 0.16 and aroma strength (safranal) varied from 28.04 ± 0.13 to 36.25 ± 0.06, for saffron samples of different sites. Saffron from Pulwama location exhibited the highest coloring strength (230.13 ± 0.11) and highest flavor strength (95.62 ± 0.16), whereas, highest aroma strength (36.25 ± 0.06), was shown by saffron from subsite of Srinagar. Approximately, 80% of saffron samples exhibited the finest quality, belonging to grade I of ISO. Chemometric technique, Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied on UV-Vis spectra, preprocessed through different techniques. PCA models developed using spectra preprocessed by first order derivative, successfully clustered the samples according to regional sites and wavelength region 265–275 nm, 400–440 nm and 475–490 nm, mainly attributed by the picrocrocin and crocin isomers (cis- and trans-crocins) were found effective for discrimination of location. Present study ascertained the high quality of Indian saffron and emphasizes the efficacy of UV-Vis spectroscopy conjoined with chemometrics for quality authentication and geographical discrimination of saffron from regional sites.
Kumari et al. (Tue,) studied this question.