Degradation and regulation of edible flower pigments under thermal processing: a review

Abstract

More and more consumers are aware of the potential health benefits of edible flower pigments. With the increased popularity and broader application of edible flower pigments, their degradation under thermal processing has attracted researchers’ attention, because this may affect the pigment functionalities. At high temperature of thermal processing, polyene pigments are easy to oxidize, degrade and isomerize due to high unsaturation, and phenolic pigments may hydrolyze and isomerize of glycosides, which will result in the decreased antioxidant activity and eating quality, and discounted potential health benefits. Therefore, it is very important to understand the degradation mechanisms of edible flower pigments under thermal processing, which is important to develop corresponding control methods to minimize such negative impacts. This review paper discussed the recent development in the degradation mechanisms and regulation methods of edible flower pigments under thermal processing.

Keywords:

• Edible flower pigments
• thermal
• degradation
• regulation

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial supports from National Key R&D Program of China (Contract No. 2017YFD0400901), the 111 Project(BP0719028), Jinan City Science & Technology Innovation Project of Ten Agricultural Characteristic Industries, National First-Class Discipline Program of Food Science and Technology (No. JUFSTR20180205), Jiangsu Province (China) “Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control” Industry Development Program.