نشریه زراعت و فناوری زعفران
سال دهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 36، تابستان 1401)

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a sterile geophyte plant that propagates vegetatively by means of a corm formation. During each growing season, saffron propagates by daughter corms produced from the mother corm. The daughter corms are formed above the mother corm. The plant can be maintained up to 8–10 years. In order to study the effect of corm harvesting year on daughter corm and flower yield of saffron, a four- year experiment was conducted at Research Field, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran during four growing seasons of 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Treatments were four corm harvesting years that considered as one, two, three and four years aged plots. Studied traits were flower numbers per m2, fresh weight of flower per m2, dried weight of stigma per m2, number of daughter corms per m2, dried weight of daughter corms, daughter corm diameter and number and weight of daughter corms in five weight groups such as <4, 4-8, 8-12, 12-16 and >16 g. Based on the results, the highest production gains in flower numbers (67.1 flowers per m2), flower fresh weight (32.31 g.m-2) and stigma dried weight (0.761 g.m-2) were observed in the second harvesting year. Also, the maximum daughter corm number and daughter corm yield were recorded for the third harvesting year with 189.5 corms.m-2 and 603.91 g.m-2, respectively. Although the progeny corm number continued to rise each year, at the third generation corm production was dominated by corms below 12 g and this suggests a need to lift the corms and replanting at the beginning of the fourth year.

Balanced nutrition is one of the most important methods to increase the quantity and quality of agricultural products such as saffron. Optimal application of fertilizer and impose the balance between nutrients is very important; achieving it requires a proper assessment of plant needs. Because the leaf is the main and most important tissue of plant metabolism so decomposition of its nutrients and interpretation of the results according to standard methods can provide complete information about the nutritional status of the plant, and can also be used to determine the order of nutrient requirements and fertilizer priority of the fields. In the present study, in order to investigate the nutritional status of saffron in South Khorasan province, leaf samples were collected from 23 farms and analysed for determining the macro and micronutrients concentration. Using nutrients concentration in high yielding fields, reference concentration (Cref ) was obtained for N, P and K nutrients 2.94, 0.25 and 1.22 percent respectively. As well as Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu Cref was 215.17, 27.21, 21.30 and 7.27 mg/kg respectively. After obtaining the reference concentration, the DOP value was calculated and based on that, the order of nutrient requirements was determined. The results showed that the absolute value of DOP for all nutrients studied was more than zero, in the other words, there was a nutritional imbalance in all fields. In more than 95% of cases, the nutritional imbalance was due to nutrient deficiencies, although in a few cases, the nutritional imbalance was also related to the excess of nutrients. Based on the indices of deviation from optimum percentage, among macronutrients potassium in 70% of the studied farms and among the micronutrients, manganese in 60%, and iron in 30% of the farms, had highest negative indices. Overall and based on the results of this study, it can be recommended that in saffron farms of South Khorasan province, the use of fertilizers containing potassium, iron and manganese should be given priority.

The goal of meta-analysis is to provide knowledge and better understanding of the phenomena under study. The statistical technique of a large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings. We conducted a global meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of various fertilizers on saffron yield using data obtained from peer-reviewed publication (71 studies representing 14 studies on biofertilizers, 16 studies on compost, 14 studies on humic acid, 26 studies on chemical fertilizers (NPK) and 16 studies integrated application of fertilizers). Based on the results, the highest effect size was related to the impact of humic acid on dried weight of stigma (g=3.434). After humic acid, biofertilizer, chemical fertilizer and compost were computed in the next ranks. The standard error for compost (E = 0.101) was calculated less and with higher accuracy, so it is recommended with 95% confidence interval. Based on the results of Begg and Mazumdar correlation, all studies except humic acid on dried weight of stigma, humic acid on fresh weight of stigma, manure on flower number, chemical fertilizers on dried weight of stigma and chemical fertilizers on fresh weight of flower were homogeneous. Among the application of manure rate, 60 t cow manure per ha and 5 t poultry manure per ha had the highest and lowest effects, respectively. The results of meta-analysis for compost rates on dried weight of stigma indicated that 60 t per ha had the maximum impact. The highest effect of humic acid on dried weight of stigma was computed for 30 kg/ha. Based on the results it seems that there is no good long-term plan to resolve existing problems of soil fertilizers on saffron production systems and most of the experiments are based on researcher’s opinion, ease of implementation or following published articles in credible journals. Generally, the meta-analysis results provide a basis for conducting trade-off analyses to support the fertilizer management and development strategies based on available scientific findings.

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is the most valuable spice in the world. Due to the lack of genomic information, saffron breeding has encountered many problems. To this end, generating and collecting genetic data using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques is crucial for saffron traditional and molecular breeding programs. Molecular markers, especially powerful co-dominance markers such as simple sequence repeats (SSRs) markers play an important role in breeding projects. In the present study for the first time, SSR markers related to genes associated with F. oxysporum disease of corms were identified following a RNA-Seq based transcriptomic approach. To this end, total RNA was extracted from mature corms and RNA-Seq was performed based on the Novaseq6000 platform. The De-novo assembly was performed with Trinity software and the MISA search tool was used to identify SSRs. Based on the results of this study, 357028 transcripts were identified. A total of 70060 transcripts were identified to contain SSR sequences. BLAST algorithm analysis revealed that the highest similarity between saffron SSRs was found with that of rice and Arabidopsis. Among the identified unigenes, 18846, 23988 and 10969 genes were identified in UNIPROT, Nr and GO databases, respectively, in which 10375 unigenes were common to all databases. Due to the high priority of saffron in Iran as a strategic crop plant, any genetic information, including mining SSRs, is of great importance in studying genetic diversity, constructing genetic maps, linkage and QTLs analysis in saffron future breeding programs.

Investigation the Relationship between Saffron warehouse receipt's price fluctuations and saffron future trading volume in Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME)AbstractThe Present article examines the effect of future trading volume on warehouse receipt's price fluctuations and the two way communication between them, in order to analyze mixture of Mixture of Distribution Hypothesis (MDH) and Sequential Information Arrival Hypothesis (SIAH).For this purpose, this study using the relationship between linear and non-linear causality between these variables. Results indicate that there is a two linear causality relationship between warehouse receipt’s price fluctuation and future trading volume. To investigate the existence of non-linear causality between the two under studied, variables VAR model residual was used. The BDS test Results on VAR model residuals show the existence of a non-linear relationship between the mentioned variables. The results of the non-linear granger causality test based on neural network show that futures trading volume are the cause for price fluctuations in saffron warehouse receipt and therefore it can be stated that In Saffron trading in Iran commodity exchange, information flows from futures market to cash market and speculation in saffron warehouse receipt market as a stabilizer could not affect future trading prices. Materials and Methods In this study, ARMA models are used to analyze the time series production process and then Garch model to extract time series fluctuations of saffron warehouse receipts, VAR model to use model residuals and to recognize the existence of nonlinear relationships between variables. The linear and nonlinear Granger causality test has been used to examine the causality, which explains the nonlinear Granger causality test and its related preparations. To use nonlinear tests such as Granger nonlinear causality test, first it is necessary to ensure the existence of nonlinear relationships between variables, which is done by the BDS test, which is described below. After proving the existence of nonlinear relationships between variables, in this study, we used artificial neural networks and R software to investigate the existence of nonlinear causality.The results of BDS test on the residuals obtained from the VAR model between the variables show the existence of a non-linear relationship between the variables. The results show that although the existence of causality between the studied variables is proved linearly, but due to the non-linear effects between the variables and Granger nonlinear causality test, price fluctuations of warehouse receipts cannot be the cause of saffron futures volume. This means that information is flowing from the saffron futures markets to spot market, and since price fluctuations in warehouse receipt cannot be a reason for the volume of saffron futures transactions, It can be stated that speculation in the commodity deposit certificate market will not lead to changes in the trading volume of futures and as a result the price will not stabilize in future periods.

Agriculture plays a pivotal role in Iran’s economy by increasing production, exports, and employment and supplying food needs. Therefore, according to the country’s strategic goals to develop non-oil exports, saffron has been paid attention as one of the most important agricultural products due to its high income and currency earnings. However, the exports of this product to target markets have been reduced in recent years. On the other hand, the complexities of the global trade network have led the countries operating in this network to increase their specialization. Import specialization improves the supply chain to provide the food needs of importing countries, which play a key role in trade. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the specialization pattern of saffron importing countries and analyse its impact on Iran’s exports using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood method over 2001-2017. According to the results, the coefficient of the variable relative import advantage (RMA), as a proxy of import specialization, is positive and significant, thus having a significant effect on Iranian saffron exports. In addition, per capita GDP and population affect Iran’s saffron exports positively and significantly, while the coefficients of geographical distance and food crisis are negative and statistically significant. Therefore, due to the increasing specialization of saffron-importing countries and its significant effect on Iran’s exports, exporters are suggested to focus on close target markets with high per capita income and a high degree of specialization.