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Description
Saffron, the most expensive spice in the world, is comprised of dried and dark red stigma of Crocus sativus L. flowers of the Iridaceae family. It is mainly used as a spice for imparting color, fragrance, and flavor to food, but its medicinal and dyeing properties are also well known. In the United States, saffron products are used as dietary supplements for mood elevation, relaxation, weight loss, and to increase metabolism. This paper describes two analytical methods for the determination of crocetin esters, picrocrocin, and safranal in saffron samples and dietary supplements for inclusion in a monograph under development by the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia. Method validation showed satisfactory results in linearity, precision and recovery. The content of picrocrocin, safranal and crocetin esters ranged from 0.6-10.2%, 0.02-0.22%, and 2.8- 25.6%, respectively for thirty-seven stigma samples. Twenty-nine dietary supplements were analyzed. No saffron compounds were found in 16 (55%) of these products. Flower of Carthamus tinctorius and fruit of Gardenia jasminoides were the main adulterants detected in dietary supplements. Summarily, 60 compounds, including five standards were tentatively identified from saffron stigma, style, and petal samples using high resolution mass spectrometry. Principle component analysis was used to discriminate between saffron stigma samples and dietary supplements. The results indicated that commercial products are of variable quality and that this analytical method is suitable for quality assessment of a variety of both raw material and finished dietary supplements.
Publication Date
2-21-2024
Relational Format
poster
Recommended Citation
Katragunta, Kumar; Avula, Bharathi; Wang, Ya-Hong; Upton, Roy; and Khan, Ikhlas A., "Analysis of Crocetins and Safranal variations in Saffron (Crocus sativus) Stigma Samples and Dietary Supplements using HPLC/UHPLC-PDA-MS: Chemical Profiling and Chemometric Analysis using LC-QToF" (2024). Annual Poster Session 2023-2024. 16.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters_2024/16