Selective Method of Detection and Quantification of Safranal – The Natural Benzodiazepine- Like Gaba-A Receptor Agonist

Safranal, the organic volatile compound isolated from stigmas of saffron flowers (Crocus sativus) is the constituent primarily responsible for mood enhancing activity. It has been previously reported that the protective effect of safranal in anxiety and depression is mediated by the GABA-A receptor complex. Because of the commercial interest of saffron extract (2% safranal) it is essential to describe a more sensitive and discriminating methods that can quantify safranal with less interference from other components and adulterants absorbing at similar wavelength. The results here reported show that the previously reported ISO-UV/TS 3632 – 2 method (spectrometry) has lack of specificity and selectivity for the safranal analysis. The content of safranal in saffron extract is susceptible to adulteration by adding other artificial colorants as tartrazine or other parts itself of the saffron plant. The selective HPLC method here described is suitable for the detection of native safranal, not native colorants or synthetic molecules. Moreover this robust repetitive validated method, can depict the singular hplc profile of Iridafran™ saffron extract. The introduction of a photodiode array detector (DAD) let us the detection and quantification in one single run of safranal (310nm), crocin (440nm) and picrocrocin (250nm), pigments naturally content in saffron stigmas. Furthermore the method here presented is suitable for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of pigments in other botanical extracts