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American-Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, vol.3, no.2, pp.126-129, 2009 (Scopus)
Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a cormous plant which is one of the most economic valuable plants as medicinal and aromatic ingredients world wide. Saffron is used mainly dye, food, drug and pharmacology industries. It has analgesic and sedative properties so folk herbal medicines have used for some diseases. Saffron consumption is rising but production is not well-proportional. Three of the cultivation care prosedures applied to increase productivity during saffron production are using big size mother corms, planting different growth conditions like greenhouse and extending harvest period. The aim of the study is investigation of saffron productivity with using 2 different horizontal corm dimensions (A size with 10-24 mm and B size with 25-40 mm) under greenhouse condition in autumn-winter season in Kocaeli province of Turkey. The experiments were conducted in Randomized Plot Design with four replicates. Investigations on the treatments were: firs-last flowering time (date), harvest periods (total days), flower number (flowers/plant), fresh saffron stigma yield (kg.ha-1) and dried saffron stigma yield (kg.ha-1). Results of this study showed that, with B corm dimension in all parameters were higher than A corm dimension. The first-last flowering dates were October 23-November 13, 2005 and flowering lasted in 22 days in B corm size while A size came into flower later than B and lasted in only 5 days. When using B size mother corms; flower number per plants was avarage 1.151 flowers/plant; fresh yield was 23.223 kg.ha-1; dry yield was 4.1065 kg.ha-1. All the data were evaluated using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the groups that showed variance were then subjected to the Duncan test with a significance value P≤0.05. As a result, this can be said that starting material for saffron stigma production, and for extent the harvest period, big corm dimension has an important role and saffron can be cultivated under greenhouse in our climatic condition. © 2009, American Eurasian Network for Scientific Information.