Colored corn: The new natural food dye?
A $1.4 million University of Illinois project, which began in 2014, is working to find less expensive natural food dyes by examining colored corn.
A $1.4 million University of Illinois project, which began in 2014, is working to find less expensive natural food dyes by examining colored corn. Most natural colors come from things like wine skins, red carrots, and beets. The problem with that is most of the product is wasted in extracting the coloring.
Jack Juvik, a geneticist in the crop sciences department at the University of Illinois, and an interdisciplinary team have been experimenting with purple and blue corn varieties, noting that health-promoting pigments known as anthocyanins are located in the outer layers of the corn kernel. That makes a big difference, economically.
“You can process corn in different ways to remove only the outer layer. The rest can still be fed into the corn supply chain to make ethanol or grits or any of the other products corn is already used for. That outer layer becomes a value-added co-product,” said Juvik.
The team has identified the optimal milling process and demonstrated that corn-derived anthocyanins remain stable in food products. Now, they are looking to discover the most potent sources of the pigments for future corn breeding. In a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the researchers looked at anthocyanin type and concentration in nearly 400 genetically distinct lines of colored corn.
They grew these lines in Illinois to see if anthocyanin concentration stayed constant from generation to generation—a critical quality for breeding new varieties. Peruvian types had some of the highest anthocyanin concentrations, and they held up throughout multiple generations. The next step will be getting those Peruvian genes into high-yielding corn hybrids selected for production in the Midwest.