Human cultivation and use of saffron spans more than 3,500 years[1][2] and extends across cultures, continents, and civilizations. Saffron, a spice derived from the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), has through history remained among the world's most costly substances. With its bitter taste, hay-like fragrance, and slight metallic notes, the apocarotenoid-rich saffron has been used as a seasoning, fragrance, dye, and medicine.
The saffron crocus is a genetically monomorphic clone[3] native to Southwest Asia;[4][5] it was probably first cultivated in or near Persia.[6]The wild precursor of domesticated saffron crocus was likely Crocus cartwrightianus, which originated in Crete or Central Asia;[3] C. thomasii and C. pallasii are other possible sources.[7][8] The saffron crocus is now a triploid that is "self-incompatible" and male sterile; it undergoes aberrant meiosis and is hence incapable of independent sexual reproduction—all propagation is by vegetative multiplication via manual "divide-and-set" of a starter clone or by interspecific hybridisation.[9][8] If C. sativus is a mutant form of C. cartwrightianus, then it may have emerged in late Bronze Age Crete.[10]
Humans may have bred C. cartwrightianus specimens by screening for specimens with abnormally long stigmas. The resulting saffron crocus was documented in a 7th-century BC Assyrian botanical reference compiled under Ashurbanipal,[11] and it has since been traded and used over the course of four millennia and has been used as treatment for some ninety disorders.[12] The C. sativus clone was slowly propagated throughout much of Eurasia, later reaching parts of North Africa, North America, and Oceania. Global production on a by-mass basis is now dominated by Iran, which accounts for some 90% of the annual harvest
