Analytical Protocols in Carotenoid Analysis

Carotenoids are key pigments in microalgae organisms where they develop significant functions related with the capture of light and other metabolic processes. Indeed, considering the actions carotenoids perform in mammals, with potential benefits to human health, the concept of microalgae as carotenoid food sources deserves a growing attention. Therefore, a great diversity of analytical protocols is available, although the striking structures that carotenoids arrange in microalgae, and the complex profile these organisms often show, still demand the application of state-of-the-art techniques for their isolation and identification. This chapter is focused on the analytical techniques applied for the exhaustive extraction of pigments from microalgae and, thereafter, the LC methods that allow the acquisition of the individual chromatographic and spectroscopic properties of the carotenoids. At this point the reader realizes that the identification of carotenoids requires further independent and complementary physicochemical properties through hyphenated LC systems with hybrid mass spectrometers.