Abstract:
Saffron (Crocus sativus L.)
is the most precious spice in the world. This
plant is sterile and the saffron propagation is
possible only via the cultivation of corms.
The physical properties of saffron corms are
prerequisite to designing and developing
harvesting, handling, sizing and sowing
equipments of corms. Therefore, some
physical properties of the saffron corm were
determined in this study. The experiments
were conducted on three sets of saffron
crocus corms from main producer areas of
Khorasan province, located in Eastern Iran,
namely Torbat-e-Heydaryeh, Kashmar, and
Gonabad. Our results have shown that there
were no significant differences among most
of the physical properties in the three
different cultivation regions. The mean
values of mass, height, major diameter,
minor diameter, geometric mean diameter,
arithmetic mean diameter, volume, corm
density, bulk density and sphericity for the
three regions were 4.44 g, 18.80 mm, 21.86
mm, 18.85 mm, 19.73 mm, 19.84 mm, 3.76
cm3 , 0.642 gcm-3, 1.11 gcm-3 and 90.04%,
respectively. We have determined the
average values of the coefficient of friction
for the three corm regions on steel,
galvanized steel, plywood, rubber and
polyethylene sheets: 0.517, 0.404, 0.462,
0.584 and 0.402, respectively. The natural
repose angles of saffron corm for Torbat-e-
Heydaryeh, Gonabad and Kashmar regions
were also determined: 32.62, 30.56 and
30.31 degree, respectively.
