Preliminary Study On Composition Analysis And Extraction Process Of Betacyanins In Suaeda Salsa L.

Consumers are increasingly avoiding foods containing synthetic colourants, which lead to replace them by natural pigments in food industries. Plant produces a lot of compounds for food colouring, such as the water-soluble anthocyanins, betalains, and carminic acid, as well as the oil soluble carotenoids and chlorophylls. The health-benefit properties of natural pigments have been paid attention to by more and more researchers. Betalains are water-soluble nitrogen-containing pigments, divided into two groups: the red-violet betacyanins and the yellow-orange betaxanthins. Betalains have not been much explored as bioactive compounds because of their relative scarceness in nature. But some studies have indicated that betalains will be mostly used as antioxidant pigments. These findings have helped to motivate utilisation of betalains as food colourants.Suaeda Salsa L. is a typical enhalophyte distributing widely in coastline saline fields. It has been found that some flavonoids in Suaeda Salsa L. have antioxidant activity. Medically, crude extract from Suaeda Salsa can kill diamond back mothes (Plutella xylostella) and have them starve to death; Water extract of Suaeda Salsa seedlings has an effect on non-specific immune response of mice; Volatile component of Suaeda Salsa can lead esunhua to obvious electroantennogram (EAG) response. Suaeda Salsa L. has abundant nutrient value and is widely used as vegetables. Suaeda Salsa L. contains a lot of flavonoids which have medicine and health effects on human beings. Betacyanins in leaves of Suaeda Salsa are also good colorants and antioxidants. To achieve the development and application of red pigment in Suaeda Salsa L., the prime extraction process, structure composition and antioxidant activity were preliminarily studied, the results are as follows: 1. The shoot of Suaeda salsa L. growing in the intertidal area of Yellow River Delta were used to optimize the extraction technology of betacyanins. The optimum extraction conditions, that 60% ethanol solution was used as extraction solvent, ratio of material to solvent was 1:20 and extraction was achieved with ultrasonic twice at room temperature for 30 min, were established by determing the total peak areas of four betacyanin components in high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC).2. Four betacyanins were isolated and identified from Suaeda salsa L. by HPLC and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry(LC-MS) technology, of which three are known compounds: Betanidin, CelosianinⅡand its C15 isomer. The rest one has not identified due to little content and is needed to be prepared and identified.3. For antioxidant activity, the inhibition ratio of P388 leukemia cells in the crude extract of betacyanins was 15.42%, that of uterine cancer hela was 4.31%, indicating that crude extracts of betacyanins in Suaeda salsa L. has low cytotoxicity; The antioxidant capacity of both betanidin and celosianin in 10μg/mL is better than that of vitamin C and rutin, but with the increasing concentration, small changes are found in their antioxidant capacity, indicating that these two substances at low concentration has reached a higher antioxidant level, better to application in low concentration.