A study on the extraction and stability of blue and green pigment from Clitoria ternatea and Pandanus amaryllifolius for food colouring / Wan Amira Adlin Wan Haniff

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the extraction and stability of colour pigment from butterfly pea pandan leaves, Blue and green artificial colourant for food colouring. The natural colourant was extracted using Hydrodistillation, Supercritical Fluid Extraction and also Ultrasonic Homogenizer. The sample preparation was done by washing, cut into pieces, mixed with water and blend to achieve high surface area for the pigment to be extracted. The stability studies were done by the observation of the product (making of muffin), difference range of temperature, light condition, stored at the presence of light and absence of light and also storage. The analysis was done for 3-4 weeks for all tests. Besides, toxicology studies been done by inductivecoupled plasma spectroscopy (ICP-S). Findings are, the artificial colourant showed better stability than natural one but natural blue colourant showed good stability result compared to natural green colourant. Blue colourant showed the higher stability in temperature analysis. The colour for both artificial and natural colourant faded towards time but the most significant instability was the pandan extract. The limitations were, the extraction using Hydrodistillation and Supercritical Fluid Extraction was not suitable for colour extraction since the purpose of using those method is for oil extraction. The colour of untreated samples quickly faded during heating and storage at different temperature. Colour intensity was the best at lower temperature if it is been stored for a long time. Further improvements may fine the method to make the sample’s colour intensity last long The results indicate the possibility of using Ultrasonic Homogenizer as an extraction method for natural colourant gives better stability results.