ABSTRACT
Demand of consumers for natural food colorants is driving manufacturers to find natural sources of colors and flavors. Anthocyanins is a group of water soluble natural pigments found primarily in red-toned fruits and vegetables. Anthocyanins have a limitation due to their relative instability, which causes loss of color, particularly under processing conditions. Extraction methods of anthocyanins from plant material are nonselective and yield pigment solutions with large amounts of other compounds such as sugars, sugar alcohols, organic acids, and amino acids which are detrimental to the stability of pigments. Stability of anthocyanins is strongly influenced by sugars, oxygen, pH [1], temperature, light [2], UV-light [3] and concentration of colorant itself [4]. In this regard, attention on the purification of these pigments has been on the rise. There are a good number of sources rich in the anthocyanins content, jamun (Jambolao) being one among them. Various medicinal properties such as stomachic, astringent, antiscorbutic, diuretic, antidiabetic, antioxidant, and antiproliferative have been reported for jamun anthocyanins [5-8]. Inspite of having enormous medicinal and food applications, there is a paucity of information regarding the purification and concentration of jamun anthocyanins. Hence, the objective of the present work is to develop an integrated process involving purification of anthocyanins from jamun employing adsorption followed by membrane pertraction (MP) and forward osmosis (FO) for the concentration of purified anthocyanins.
