International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 6, Issue 4, April-2015 ISSN 2229-5518 IJSER © 2015 http://www.ijser.org Anthocyanin Pigment Identification of Batu Local Rose Flower as A Natural Colorant to Replace Harmful Rhodamin B Colorant Elfi Anis Saati Abstract— This study aimed at identifying anthocyanin pigment in local rose petal from Batu. Extraction processes were conducted in four- level solvents (aquades-citric acid, aquades-lactic acid, methanol-HCl and Aquades-sulfuric acid). In order to measure the potential amount of anthocyanin pigment, isolation procedure was done with its twice further developers, concentrated HCl: H2O=3:97 and BuOH-HCl (n BuOH: HCl 2N=1:1) resulting in isolate and powdered pigment. The identification of anthocyanin was further conducted by using UV Vis spectrophotometry and FTIR analysis (by malvidin chloride standard). The study result showed that the use of aquades-citric acid and aquades-lactic acid triggered the most apparent anthocyanin pigment identification, as observed by their peak absorbency scale of 0.408 and 0.679 at 513.5-514 nm. The anthocyanin types identified by utilizing spectrophotometry and FTIR analyzes were malvidin glycoside, sianidin glucoside, and pelargonidin glycoside Index Terms— Key words: anthocyanin, Batu local rose flower, natural colorant, Rhodamin B ——————————  —————————— 1 INTRODUCTION A nthocyanin pigment is a water-soluble pigment that fre- quently exists in biological diversity in Indonesian nature. It is commonly represented by red, pink, purple, and bluish colors [1,2,3]. These colors are also likely to be chosen for food and beverage outlook in Indonesian society, including some cos- metic products [4]. However, some news has reported the high frequency of people using non-food colorant such as Rhoda- min B which is in fact harmful for human consumption. This issue has become a major concern especially in higher educa- tion level that holds broad responsibility to develop safe and healthy food technology. Therefore, an exploration of local natural product to replace the dangerous non-food colorant is of urgency. One of which is by extracting the potential of a particular pigment as natural colorant [5]. Rose flower is the most preferred flower and acts as a symbol of love or likeliness; in addition, it is massively grown for dec- orative flower supply both in formal and informal events [6]. Rose is majorly cultivated in Batu city, East Java, where the local rose is crossbred with various roses from different re- gions such as West Java, and Netherland hybrids. Anthocya- nin pigment can be easily tapped in some parts of a plant as in the leaves, fruit [7], root, as well as flower [8,9,10]. The result of the preliminary test conducted on red kana flower [11] which resembles rose at some points revealed that kana flower petals contain anthocyanin pigment. However, very little re- search has been conducted to observe local rose petal sub- stance from Batu; neither did the function of the pigment as a natural colorant which possibly replace harmful non-food col- orant, Rhodamin B [12]. This study aimed at identifying an- thocyanin pigment in local rose petals from Batu and its po- tential use as natural colorant. 2 RESEARCH METHOD This study was an experimental study by using simple random sampling. Pigment extraction was conducted by uti- lizing four-level solvents (aquades-citric acid, aquades-lactic acid, methanol-HCl and Aquades-sulfuric acid). The red rose petals (local Batu) as sample were extracted by using: 0.02M of lactic acid, 45gram/300ml solvent, and before being concen- trated by rotary evaporator vacuum (50-60 o C) and isolated by twice extraction developers BAA (thick or concentrated HCl:H2O=3:97) and BuOH-HCl (n BuOH:HCl 2N=1:1). The next step was to put small amount of the extract on a thin plague in order to obtain anthocyanin pigment isolates, which led to the further step to thoroughly identify more pigment by UV Vis spectrophotometry [13, 3]. The process was verified by functional group frequency observation by FTIR analysis [14] with its anthocyanin standard of malvidin chloride type. 3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION The findings proved that all four solvents used in the ex- traction process could generate anthocyanin pigment resem- bling that of character in band I and II; each represented glikon and aglikon [15]. From Table 1 and Picture 1, it was identified that UV Vis spectrophotometry observation towards maximum absorbance peak in both bands was relevant with the existence of anthocyanin pigment character decisive point, with its maximum absorbance level around 235-244 nm and its aglikon/anthocyanidin around 513.5-518 nm. This study find- ing was in line with Markham [13] asserting that both glikon and aglikon served their functions as glikon flavonoid and 327 IJSER brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UMM Institutional Repository