Anthocyanins are wonderful plant pigments widely distributed in nature and responsible for most of the orange, red, purple, violet, blue and even some black colors of plants. My work with anthocyanins as natural alternatives to synthetic dyes started over two decades ago at Oregon State University, under the guidance of Dr. Wrolstad. Through these years I have continued investigating this class of compounds and witnessed interest on anthocyanins increase around the world. Anthocyanins are becoming more relevant to the food industry as the demand for natural alternatives to synthetic dyes is increasing. In addition, research has shown that anthocyanins are potent antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, and anthocyanins consumption has been associated with lower incidence of chronic diseases.<br/>However, replacing synthetic colors with natural alternatives can be rather challenging. Anthocyanins change color with pH, and are susceptible to degradation during processing and storage. Even more, despite the variety of anthocyanin-based colors encountered in nature, most anthocyanins applications have been limited to produce different shades of red and purple in foods.<br/>In this talk we will review many lessons learned from nature and from Wrolstad about the world of anthocyanins: the role of the anthocyanin chemical structure, copigmentation, and other mechanisms used by plants to stabilize the anthocyanin chemical structure and how we can imitate nature to produce a wide variety of anthocyanin-based colors.

Colorful world of anthocyanins: Learning from nature

254th National Meeting (2017)

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