The anthocyanins

Abstract

Anthocyanin pigmentation is almost universal in the flowering plants and provides scarlet to blue colours in flowers, fruits, leaves and storage organs. It continues to provide a challenge to plant biochemists because of the intricate chemical variation and the complexity of biosynthesis, metabolism and regulation. The two most important recent advances in the structural characterization of anthocyanin pigments have been the application of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and of fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry (FAB-MS) to their analyses. Both these procedures have proved of value in studying zwitterionic anthocyanins, a relatively new class of acylated anthocyanin recently recognized to be widespread in the plant kingdom (Harborne and Boardley, 1985). These anthocyanins, which are acylated through sugar by such acids as malonic, are labile in solution and when such pigments are isolated using solvents containing mineral acid, they are rapidly degraded to the corresponding unacylated glycoside.