Characteristics and Stability of Violet Red Pigment Extracted from Salicornia herbacea L.

To examine stability of a violet red pigment in a Salicornia herbacea L., several tests for pH, sugar, organic acid, ascorbic acid, amino acid, salt and temperature effect were carried out. A violet red pigment in Salicornia herbacea L. was the most stable in the range of pH 4 to 6. Each of the violet red pigments in Salicornia herbacea L. added with different amounts of sugar showed higher retention rate according to storage time than those of the control group. After 10 days of storage, especially the retention rate of the experimentals with 0.5 M sucrose was higher than the controls by about 11.1% while fructose, maltose, glucose and galactose were less higher in order. Also, adding organic acid reduced retention rate of the experimentals over the controls irrespective of sort and concentration of organic acid; also, the retention rate of the experiment with 0.5 M organic acid, the highest amount of all, reduced radically to 13.1 to 15.9% after 10 days storage. The retention rate of the experimentals added 1,000 ppm ascorbic acid and thio urea respectively after 10 days was 48.4%, which is higher than the controls by around 23.1%. As to amino acid, treatment on the pigment with aspartic acid 50 mM marked the highest retention rate of 41.5% and treatment with 2.0 M NaCl showed 31.6% retention rate, which was higher than the controls. While low temperature like 5 o C and 25 o C kept the stability of the pigment in storage, as temperature increased the stability of the pigment dropped rapidly.