A pound of Saffron can cost up to $5,000 by the time it reaches the West, making it one of the costliest spices in the world. Now growers of the spice in Kashmir are unsure whether the centuries-old ...

Kashmir’s saffron production was already struggling. Battered by erratic rainfall, inadequate irrigation and urban encroachment on farmland, it had plummeted from 15.97 metric tonnes in 1997-98 ...

Saffron has been cultivated since 500 AD in the mountainous Kashmir valley, which is the only place in India where it is grown. Production here reached its peak in the 1990s at an annual average ...

KASHMIR’S RED GOLD It takes 150,000 flowers to produce 1kg of saffron -- fragile strands of crimson and fragrant filaments laboriously picked by hand from saffron bulbs. The spice is used in ...

Tucked in a valley beneath the snow-capped Himalayas of the Indian Kashmir region is the town of Pampore, famed for its farms that grow the world's most expensive spice - the red-hued saffron.

Every autumn, his family comes together for the annual saffron harvest in the Pampore region of Kashmir, and embark on the delicate and long process of preparing the spice, which can sell for as ...

Alongside saffron, Kashmir's apples, walnuts, cherries, and almonds are already famous, but these crops could be processed and packaged for export in modern facilities equipped with cold chains.

But saffron from Kashmir is arguably the most highly prized, says Sana Javeri-Kadri, whose seven-year-old Oakland, Calif.-based spice business, Diaspora Spice Co., sources its inventory from a ...

While the myths arouse discord, there’s one item of consensus: Kashmiri saffron is the sweetest, most precious spice in the world. Its strands are thicker and more fragrant than its counterpart ...

Nearly 90 percent of the world’s saffron is grown in Iran, but experts consider Kashmir’s crop to be superior for its deep red colour and distinct aroma.

About 7% of the world's saffron is harvested in the Indian-controlled union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, making India one of the top exporters since it gained control of part of the region in 1947.