Farmers deploy next-gen solution to protect world's most expensive spice: 'Amazing innovation'

Yahoo

23-02-2025

Scientists are moving quickly to protect India's production of an iconic and coveted spice, saffron, from rising threats like record-setting temperatures, urbanization, and unpredictable rainfall.
Reuters reported on the impact on the Kashmir region, which accounts for 90% of the nation's production. Saffron is the world's most valuable spice that can command up to 325,000 rupees ($3,800 USD) a kilogram (2.2 pounds). Cultivating it is labor-intensive and includes picking the saffron by hand off of the bright purple flowers of crocus plants.
India is second in the world to Iran in saffron production, with much of it in the farms of the Kashmir town of Pampore. Unfortunately, that output is lagging. In the 2010-11 financial year, the nation produced 8.8 tons of the spice. By 2023-24, the federal government revealed that number had been cut by more than a third to 2.8 tons.
To address the issue, farming crocus plants indoors is a remedy to the outdoors' ever-changing and frequently inhospitable climate. One of the scientists involved, Dr. Bashir Ilahi, told Reuters that cultivating saffron indoors in tubes with essential nutrients and appropriate levels of moisture offers many advantages.
"Growing saffron in a controlled environment demonstrates temperature resistance and significantly reduces the risk of crop failure," Ilahi noted. While many local farmers relish in the old-school process of growing it outdoors, Ilahi and others have found takers after giving demonstrations on indoor farming.
Abdul Majeed, president of Kashmir's Saffron Growers Association, called the development an "amazing innovation." Majeed himself is an indoor grower.
The scientists' proactive solution using indoor farming is part of many attempts to leverage the new technology. A startup, Plenty, is an exciting solution that can help cut down on pesticide use while using less land and water than conventional outdoor plots. Scientists have even gone so far as to explore indoor farming that includes growing crops in the dark.
While those examples of indoor farming are intended to minimize the use of land, water, and pesticides, India's use of it joins other attempts to get creative in fighting climate threats.
There's a global effort to engineer more resilient crops that can withstand the increase in threats like floods, extreme heat, and droughts. To get there, scientists are trying to learn new insights about how plants protect themselves against threats. It's a big challenge, but all of these innovations can help protect against food insecurity while helping to make agriculture more efficient and viable in the long term.
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As long as the world keeps getting hotter, extreme weather events and more challenging conditions for agriculture look to be a certain reality. Some saffron growers in India are urging the country to do even more to protect farmers against the rising risks to the crop.
"The government should promote indoor saffron cultivation on a much larger scale as climate change is affecting the entire world, and Kashmir is no exception," saffron grower Manzoor Ahmad Mir related to Reuters.
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