Chemical composition of Saffron (Crocus sativus L) from four countries

Saffron, the dried stigmas of Crocus sativus L., is widely used mainly as herbal medicine or food coloring, and as a flavoring agent. It is cultivated only in a few countries around the world. Comparative analytical and semi-preparative High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) studies using photodiode array analyses were performed on a Waters HPLC system for the separation of several ingredients from alcoholic extracts of four different saffron types. Ten saffron peaks were identified by comparison of their retention times with those of known reference compounds and quantified from samples of Azerbaijanian, Spanish, Indian and Iranian saffron as follows: picrocrocin, trimethyl hydroxy carboxaldehyde cyclohexene, kaempherol, cis/trans-crocins and safranal. 2-nitroaniline (Sigma Chemical Co.) was used as the internal standard. It was found that the total content of carotenoids in Azerbaijanian and Iranian saffron samples was higher in comparison to other samples. These HPLC analytical procedures are sensitive, reproducible and allow for higher scaling of the instrumental conditions for obtaining sufficient amounts (mg) of the different saffron components for further cytotoxic assessments. Spanish saffron metabolites were collected and tested for their cytotoxicity against human tumor cells. Our results confirm that glycosidic carotenoid-type metabolites are responsible for the antitumor effects demonstrated by saffron.