Abstract

PEREZ-RICO, Daniel A. et al. Phycocyanin Thermo-photostability: An Accelerated Life-test Analysis. J. Mex. Chem. Soc [online]. 2020, vol.64, n.3, pp.218-229.  Epub June 04, 2021. ISSN 1870-249X.  https://doi.org/10.29356/jmcs.v64i3.1157.

Phycocyanin is a natural blue colorant with antioxidant activity which can be safely used in food, however its rapid degradation is still a concern for food manufacturing. Phycocyanin is easily degraded when exposed to mid-temperatures and/or light. Several studies have been stablished the degradation kinetics of aqueous solutions evaluating temperature or light as accelerating factors using a first order kinetic model and, both factors have been studied by separate or fixing one of them to evaluate the combined effect. The aim of this work was to develop an empirical model able to predict the effect of temperature and light combined in the degradation ratio of this pigment at selected storage conditions. We have tested five correlation models to fit temperature, light and time data to the degradation ratio of the phycocyanin; these were statistically tested to select the more appropriate. This is a novelty in the study of accelerated life-test analysis of phycocyanin, since most of the models are based on one accelerating variable at the time and the relationship between accelerating variables has not been explored before. We were able to develop a methodology to evaluate the effect of two accelerating life factors at once using CPC as model which is highly precise and easy to apply.

Keywords : Food coloring; microalgae; natural pigment; blue pigment.

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