In this week’s bulletin we are going to discuss some significant information about saffron’s chemical combinations. Most of us are already aware of saffron’s utilization in food industry and pastries and some of us also have information about saffron’s use in pharmaceutical and health industry, but we have much less information on saffron’s usage in industrial consumption and the chemical components of saffron.
Saffron’s chemical and its components;
In industry saffron is used to colorize silk and fiber. Some analyzed chemical
combinations of this herb is listed below:
1) carbohydrates: reducing sugars which are more than 20 percent of its weight, like Glucose, Mesuctose and Glycoside.
2) minerals: including cl2-p2o2-na20-k2o
3) vitamins: like B1 vitamin and B2 riboflavin.
4) lipids: like stigmasterol, campesterol
5) pigments: including liquid carotenoids in lipids like lycopene (alpha-carotene and beta-carotene) and Zeaxanthin and also water liquid carotenoids like crocin and anthocyanin. Crocin with the formula of O24 H64 C44 with the percentage of 9\1 to 15 during flowers’ blooming time, is the main factor of its yellow color.
Crocin is one of the limited carotenoids existing in the nature which can easily resolve in water. This resolvablity is one of the reasons for its wide function as a colorant in food and pharmaceutical industry. This component was discovered by Solomon and Carrar
for the first time as crystals.
Crocin’s chemical structure:
Saffron’s also have free Aglyconecrocin and small amount of Anthocyanin pigments and as mentioned above some pigments are liquid in lipids. Saffron’s coloring power is one of parameters that determines the quality of saffron which is done by measuring its color components in the wavelength of 443 nanometers then analyzed by
Spectrophotometry.
6) Glycosides (picrocrocin):
Glycoside with the formula of C16H2607 and boiling point of 156c is a non-coloring component that causes the bitter taste of saffron in fresh saffron there’s about 4% picrocrocin glycoside. This bitter component is crystallizationable and is created by hydrolysis of acid, glocuse and aldehyde by the name of safranal.
8) volatile oils and aromatic components of saffron:
The cause of strong scent and aroma of saffron are some of the volatile oils, the main and the most significant one is safranal (terpenic aromatic essence) and contains about 6% of volatile components of saffron. This volatile component is as a deactivate picrocrocin in fresh saffron but the heat effect and time partitions and frees volatile safranal aldehyde.
Safranal is a liquid volatile oil which becomes light yellow in the water steam process and is a soluble in ethanol, methanol and petroleum ether.