Note. Safranal Content in Spanish Saffron

Abstract

Safranal is the compound mainly responsible for the aroma of saffron spice and can be used as a measure of saffron quality. It is described a “safranal value” of 269 (mostly Spanish) saffron samples by means of a spectrophotometric method based on ISO 3632 and the safranal content using a thermal desorption-gas chromatography method. The variation range of safranal was obtained from both methods, although there was no acceptable lineal correlation between them. Among all saffron samples the Spanish ones had the highest levels and those from Iran the lowest, which might be attributed to the different processes used for dehydrating the stigmas.