Purification And Structure Identification Of Water-soluble Monascus Yellow Pigments

Monascus pigment is an important part of the natural pigment. In recent years, with the food safety awareness deeply rooted in us, pigments from Monascus have been much concerned with their security, stability, low-cost advantage. However, some questions such as the product of a single, low quality and instability have made them lost parts of international market. Therefore, to develop new natural pigments has become the focus of development of food additives industry.The development of "Water-soluble Monascus yellow pigments" may expand the range of these products'usage. At the same time, it indicates that China R & D level of Monascus pigment into a new stage. However, the molecular structure of these pigment derivatives are not clear. And it is a resistance barrier for application of these pigments.The author aims to structure identificating of the Water-soluble Monascus yellow pigments by thin layer chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography, photodiode array detector - evaporative light scattering detector coupled technique, tandem mass spectrometry. Finally, the auther have got 6 main component of Water-soluble Monascus yellow pigment (see Chapter 5, Table 5.1).The main research content were as follows:1.TLC was established to separate the components of Water-soluble Monascus yellow pigment.With methanol as extracting solvent, chloroform and methanol (v/v) was used as developing solvent of these pigments. After 30 minutes, Water-soluble Monascus pigments can be effectively separated.2. Based on the crude separation by TLC, the optimum chromatographic conditions of HPLC were established which is with Waters Sunfire C18 column (4.6 mm×150 mm, 5μm), 0.8 ml / min, gradient elution of methanol and water (see Table 3.1) and so on. At the same time, the hyphenated technique of photodiode array detector with evaporative light scattering detector provides a basis for LC-MS.3. The application of a variety of mass spectrometry techniques provided a reliable source of information for each component of the molecular structure and fragmentation pathway.The completion of this paper is good at understanding of their structure, expanding product applications. It also will contribute to provide a reference for related standards and to improve the quality of life of people.