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🇮🇷 Iran
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Saffron
The dried stigmas of a sterile autumn crocus, hand-picked at roughly 440,000 threads to the kilogram.
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Saffron vs Rice
Compare Saffron (Iran) and Rice (China) side by side — origin, maker, price, materials and what the difference actually means.
The short answer
- Country Iran China
- Region Khorasan, Iran Yangtze River Valley, China
- Made since Cultivated since at least the 7th century BC Around 7000 BC
- Verified record Yes No
- Source Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam
Side by side
Download as PDF| Field | Saffron | Rice |
|---|---|---|
| Country | Iran | China |
| Type | food | food |
| Maker | — | Early Chinese farmers |
| Region | Khorasan, Iran | Yangtze River Valley, China |
| Made since | Cultivated since at least the 7th century BC | Around 7000 BC |
| Verified record | Yes | No |
| Market trend | $934/kg (−33.6% since 2016) | — |
| Source | Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew | China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam |
Saffron
Saffron is the dried crimson stigma of Crocus sativus, a plant that cannot reproduce without human hands. Around 440,000 stigmas make one kilogram, every one of them picked by hand during a few October mornings, which is why it has been the world's most expensive spice for most of recorded history. Iran produces around 90 per cent of the global crop, most of it in Khorasan.
- Three stigmas are cut from each flower, by hand.
- About 440,000 dried stigmas make one kilogram, from roughly 150,000 flowers.
- Around forty hours of picking go into a single kilogram.
- The flowers open only in autumn, and are gathered in the early morning.
- Crocus sativus is sterile and has no wild population; every plant is propagated by dividing corms.
Rice
Rice was domesticated from a wild grass along China’s Yangtze River and gradually spread across Asia as farming communities moved
- There are more than 40,000 known varieties of cultivated rice.
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