Saffron is the highest priced agricultural product and a good example of profitability, sustainability, cultural and social values, and high labour demand. This COST Action addresses coordinated research on Saffron -OMICS for crop improvement, traceability, determination of authenticity, adulteration and origin to provide new insights that will lead a sound Saffron Bio-Economy. Research groups involved in this COST Action join experience in different plant sciences. They will combine and focus their efforts on a variety of scientific objectives toward main challenges found in the Saffron crop. Novel concepts on genomics such as genotyping will be exploited. New, parallel data acquisition technologies in metabolomics and large-scale phytochemistry have effectively changed bottlenecks in crop & food research, from data acquisition to data interpretation. To meet this challenge requires a concerted cross-project and multi-disciplinary approach from the different domains considered in this proposal. Increased knowledge of genetics and physiology of traditional crops through the omics ‘revolution’ is a need. The aim of CAP is to guarantee long-term food security, quality, value and diversity of food produced sustainably, and creating local employment. The development of sustainable rural economies based on HVAP such as Saffron, in synergy with DG SANCO’s policies, is pursued in the EU.
Crocus sativus L. - Saffron - biodiversity - genetic resources - breeding - genomics
