Anantnag: Indoor farming of the world’s costliest spice, saffron, is turning out to be a reality in Kashmir where farmers have successfully carried out the cultivation this season.
Experts are banking upon the method to turn around the dwindling fortunes of saffron farming in Kashmir valley. Thousands of kanals of land are used for saffron cultivation in Pampore area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district and its vicinities.
However, shrinking land cover, changing weather and lack of irrigation have seriously hampered the farming of this most costly spice of the world, leaving farmers and experts equally worried.
What could now turn to be a blessing for the farmers, and revolutionise the way Saffron is cultivated, this new method of indoor cultivation is yielding great results. Experts say that more than a kilogram of Saffron can be yielded from a 20 feet by 20 feet indoor space.
“Outdoors, it needs around 4 to 5 kanals of land to yield the same quantity of saffron,” Bashir Ilahi, a scientist working on this novel project at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST), told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the idea has been put to test by growers this year after it yielded some superb results in a controlled laboratory setting, at SKUAST’s Advanced Study Station for Saffron and Seeds Pampore.
“After promising results in laboratory settings, the method has been passed on to the traditional growers and they are finding the results equally promising,” the expert told Kashmir Reader.
Through this new multi-tier method, the corms are put in trays and they require 90 to 100 days of darkness before the yield is harvested. “The process is started in August, the flowering begins between October 10 and 15, followed by harvesting in the month of November,” Ilahi said.
“This method takes the timing of rain and/or snowfall during the saffron season considerably out of the equation,” Ilahi said, adding that this new method can be a potential game-changer. “It greatly reduces the scenario of crop failure, for the fact that saffron grown in this manner is temperature resistant.”
He, however, said that the corms needed should be of good quality, weighing more than 10 grams.
Kashmir Reader talked to the President of the Saffron Growers Association, Abdul Majeed, who is one of the farmers to have used this new method to cultivate saffron.
“We have yielded great results this year through this new method, under the supervision of SKUAST and NABARD experts,” Majeed told Kashmir Reader.
He said that this was the first year and things look promising. Majeed, like other farmers, is looking forward to using this new method extensively in the coming years.
“It is heartening for the fact that even people with no land can now cultivate saffron,” he said.
Kashmir’s saffron has been recently awarded a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, for the excellent quality it has – compared to saffron from other parts of the world. Kashmiri Saffron has a Crocin value of 8.72, compared to just 6.82 in Iranian Saffron, the other reputed spice in the world.
Crocin is a carotenoid pigment found in plants and can act as an antioxidant in humans. It gives the saffron a yellow colour.

Suhail A Shah