Botanically corm is a short and thick shoot, mainly a parenchymatous tissue and the main sources of substances needed for sprouting and flowering. Corm is covered by fibrous leaf tunics and surrounded by a series of nodes, those which develop vegetative-reproductive sprouts (apical and sub apical buds) and those which produce leaves (axillary buds). However not all these axillary buds become activated. It has been viewed that 75 percent of all the buds are located in the upper central part of the corm. The number of buds is strongly associated with corm size and hence the number of flower produced per corm. Therefore corm size is crucial to flower production and economic yield. Second factor associated with corm and yield is the density at planting. Actually by considering corm as a seed, this fact holds true for all the agronomic crop for which seed size and density at planting are two important criteria for yield improvement. Since, in terms of botany, saffron is an annual plant, but it is managed as a perennial crop under field conditions, plant density and size of the corm, which are negatively interrelated particularly in the successive years changes through the time, as saffron field ages. Therefore, the purpose of large corms and optimal density considered in the first year of planting changes through the years and what was actually the aim of choosing large corms at planting, which is more flowers per corm, changes to more flowers per colony afterwards. This is also true for optimal density at planting. Density at planting is managed by allocating a specific number of corms per a unit area of land while at the following years this changes to production of a large number of different size corms, most of which small and unproductive, per colony and hence per a unit of area. In general corm behavior which is viewed in terms of weight and diameter and also bud orientation is an important factor in saffron production. In this presentation an attempt is made to evaluate the present scientific and available and emerging technologies associated with saffron corm based on handling and management at field scales and under protected environmental conditions.

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