With the improvement of living standards, more and more people began to pay attention to health, and pure natural medicines such as saffron began to slowly enter people's sights. Because of its efficacy, it is loved by people, but its price is also prohibitive for many people, and there is a saying that "saffron is more expensive than gold". Where is it expensive? Simply put: the yield is small, the medicinal effect is good. Let's talk about that in detail.
Let's start with where saffron comes from
About 3500 years ago, saffron was cultivated as a spice, medicine and food.
The first country to appear saffron was Iran, where Iranians have a long history of using saffron, and the unique process they use to process saffron has been more than a thousand years old. The Iranian process of saffron is basically manual, which can maximize the preservation of saffron's color and aroma. Iran is also the world's largest producer of saffron, producing about 200 to 300 tonnes a year, accounting for 70 to 80 percent of global production.
What about other countries? Saffron belongs to the genus Saffron in the family Iris, although it is a drought-tolerant plant, it is suitable for growing in the winter minimum temperature is not less than minus 20 degrees, the summer maximum temperature is not higher than 35 degrees above zero and the climate in this area is dry. Therefore, the first choice for countries that meet these conditions is Iran, and other countries such as Greece, India, and Spain can only cultivate a small amount in some areas.
As for China, Chongming and the Mediterranean coast are at a latitude, it is an island impacted by the Yangtze River, there is enough silt, nutrients and microorganisms, and it is a sandy soil, which can maintain humidity without too much water storage, which is very suitable for the growth of delicate saffron.
How effective is saffron?
Saffron and saffron acid are considered to be the main active ingredients for the medicinal use of saffron. In recent years, scientists have found that saffron acid, saffron, saffron and saffron bitters in saffron have strong anti-cancer activities, and have a strong inhibitory effect on blood cancer cells, papillary cancer, flat cell tumors and soft tissue sarcoma.
According to the study, in human clinical experiments, saffron has the effect of treating a variety of chronic diseases in the human body. Through its effect of activating blood stasis, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, it can enhance the body's endurance and enhance the proliferation of lymphocytes to improve the body's cellular immunity and humoral immunity.
Finally, remind me not to eat when pregnant, which will lead to miscarriage.
Where are saffrons worth?
Although the medicinal name is saffron, the spices and medicinal herbs are actually only the saffron stigma, and there are only a few stigmas per flower.
Every year in late October, the bulbs of saffron bloom beautiful purple flowers for 15-20 days. The preciousness of saffron stems from the fact that only 3 pistils are available for the whole flower, and the highest active ingredient content is only 1/3 of the upper end of the flower bud, and the saffron is the finished product after the stigma of the flower bud is dried. These 3 small stigmas can only be gently picked by hand, and each stigma is only 2 cm long, and only 1 gram of stigma can be obtained for every 90-100 flowers collected.
As mentioned earlier, saffron has strict requirements for the growing environment, resulting in a small yield, and only the stigma of the flower head can be used for production, which makes the price of saffron more expensive than gold.
Will it always be so high?
In fact, it is said that its high price is small on the one hand, and imports from abroad are also on the one hand, and the price is based on freight and tariffs. If you don't want to do this, then you can produce it yourself.
In fact, China began to open the saffron trial planting project in Tibet in 2005 and achieved major success, and by 2012, it can be large-scale artificial breeding production, and its production scale can be listed as an industrial park. The price of saffron is not as sky-high as before, and in the era of e-commerce, many people can directly contact the place of origin to buy, eliminating the price difference link of the middleman.
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