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Anthocyanins, polyphenolic pigments found in many fruits and vegetables, are causing a strong craze for applications in the food industry as natural colouring agents. The ColorANTH project will aim to develop a process for extracting anthocyanins from grape pomace that will enable high yields to be obtained while respecting the environment and health and that is economically viable and preserves the structure and properties of anthocyanins. The newly proposed extraction process will combine microwaves and enzymes.

A bottleneck to the use of anthocyanins in industry is linked to their low chemical stability and low solubility in lipophilic media, reducing the range of their industrial applications. A major objective of the ColorANTH project will be to modulate the composition and structure of anthocyanins by enzymatic means to increase their stability and properties. In this way, various chemical groups of natural origin will be grafted to anthocyanins extracted from grape pomace and the stability and properties of the modulated anthocyanins will be characterised.

The spin-offs of the ColorANTH project will be both fundamental (better knowledge of the mechanism for extracting anthocyanins from grape pomace and their structure-property relationships) and technological (development of a process combining microwaves and enzymes for anthocyanin extraction and development of a biocatalytic process for anthocyanin functionalisation).

Contact: Pr Caroline Rémond, caroline.remond@univ-reims.fr