Pigments in food: a challenge to life sciences

Abstract

The fourth International Congress on Pigments in Food (PF IV) subtitled “A challenge to life sciences” was held in Stuttgart/Germany, from 9th to 12th October, 2006 and was organised by the Department of Plant FoodstuV Technology at Hohenheim University. The aim of this conference was to bring together pigment experts from all over the world from various scientiWc disciplines such as chemistry, food chemistry, food technology, biotechnology, nutritional and agricultural sciences as well as further Welds of applied science with a major focus on carotenoids, chlorophylls, anthocyanins and betalains. The conference was attended by 132 participants from 32 countries, representing both academia and industry. After welcome addresses by Professor H.-P. Liebig (Rector of Hohenheim University), Professor J. Empis (EuCheMS) and Professor R. Carle (Conference Chair) and a solemn musical introduction, Professor P. Winterhalter (Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany) opened the Wrst session with his keynote lecture Application of countercurrent chromatography to the analysis of natural pigments providing an overview about uses and advantages of this technique for pigment separation and puriWcation, illustrated with various applications. On the following days three further plenary lectures on diVerent topics were given. Professor S.J. Schwartz (Ohio State University, USA) delivered a presentation on Carotenoids and their bioavailability in which the multiple impacts of dietary factors on bioabsorption were highlighted. Dr. F.C. Stintzing (Hohenheim University, Germany) spoke about Betalains—a bunch of colours for food scientists and pointed out the progress in the investigation of this still underestimated pigment class, particularly in structure elucidation, structural alterations and colour stability during processing and nutritional evaluation. Professor G. Britton (University of Liverpool, UK) presented the fourth keynote lecture “How pigments are made? Can we follow Nature’s examples?” which was not only an overview about biosynthetic pathways of various pigment classes, but also prospect for future pigment production by biotechnological means. These four comprehensive plenaries were completed by 24 oral and 66 poster presentations. Moreover, six posters had been selected for short oral presentations and discussed in a special section. A variety of thematic areas were divided into four main sections. The Wrst topic, Analysis and Chemistry of Pigments addressed analytical methods for the isolation and determination of pigments in food. Structural alterations and the variability of pigments as well as the detection of new pigments in Mexican plants and Eugenia myrtifolia were also considered. Among others, the pigment and colour variability in black carrots and tandem mass spectrometry as a powerful tool to assign anthocyanins were covered. Furthermore, alternative sources for natural food colourants were presented, e.g. new yellow soluble pigments from apple following phloridzin oxidation or betalains from Hylocereus sp. fruits. The next section entitled Biological and Nutritional Properties of Pigments included reports on the cytoprotective eVects of selected carotenoids and betalains from citrus and cactus pear, antimicrobial properties of cranberry and the antioxidant potential of carotenoids, E. Sadilova (&) Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: eva.sadilova@email.cz