Morphological and molecular characterization of Italian, Iranian and Spanish saffron (Crocus Sativus L.) accessions

The use of saffron dates back to ancient times. It is commonly used in medicine, as well as the function of dye and spice in the food industry. The oldest documents about the edible use of saffron are recorded by Polyen (in the 2nd century BC), a Greek military writer who, in his graduation thesis entitled “Stratagemes” reports a list of foods consumed by the court of the Persian Achemenide dynasty (550-330 BC), which had been carved on a bronze column in front of the kitchen (Abrishami, 2004). Its cost is variable according to the production vintage and drying methodologies, it can reach up to 20,000 euros per kilo. The reason for the very limited genetic diversity in cultivated saffron is explained by its asexual mode of reproduction. The AFLP technique could be a good choice to investigate the genetic diversity because of its high-multiplex-ratio which allows detecting differences even between samples sharing most of the genetic material, and it is still one of the most used tools for the molecular characterization of genetic variability in cultivated plants. The aim of this study was to assess the variability of morpho-physiological traits and to evaluate the genetic differences among different proveniences of C. sativus with AFLP. The results of this paper in part confirm those obtained by previous studies. Despite morphological differences found between the accessions, molecular markers have revealed limited genetic differences for samples with different origin.