THE STUDY OF TOTAL CAROTENOID CONTENT IN SWEET POTATO AS A POTENTIAL NATURAL FOOD COLORING

Abstract

Sweet potato or scientifically known as Ipomea Batatas is one of the source of the carotenoid. The main objective of this study are to extract the carotenoid content in sweet potato, to determine the suitable and most efficient solvent and extraction time to extract carotenoid content from sweet potato, and to determine the color of the carotenoid content in sweet potato. Initially, the experiment was performed for extraction of carotenoid to determine the suitable solvent used. Two solvent are used which is Ethanol solvent and combination of Acetone and Petroleum Ether solvent. The result shows that ethanol solvent has extracted 189.1713±13.167 µg/g of carotenoid content and combination of Acetone and Petroleum Ether has extracted 583.436±53.644µg/g of carotenoid content from sweet potato. After that the experiment was proceeds with extraction of carotenoid at different extraction time which is 30 minutes and 60 minutes with constant volume of 400 ml. The result shows that at 30 minutes, 196.6167±17.1839µg/g of carotenoids content was extracted by using Ethanol solvent and 201.5091±4.160 µg/g of carotenoids content was extracted by using combination of Acetone and Petroleum Ether solvent while at 60 minutes it shows that Ethanol solvent has extract 187.925±3.375 µg/g of carotenoids content and combination of Acetone and Petroleum Ether solvent has extract 197.0152±5.910 µg/g of carotenoids content from sweet potato. lastly, the experiment was continued with determination of color for the carotenoid by using Chroma meter and the result show that carotenoid obtained 23.54±2.12 for *L scale, -1.60±0.37 for *a scale and 7.68±1.99 for *b scale by extraction using Ethanol solvent while for extraction using combination of Acetone and Petroleum Ether solvent the value obtained for *L scale is 23.03±2.03, for *a scale is -1.69±0.41 and for *b scale is 7.70±2.70.this result indicated carotenoid content from sweet potato was dark yellow in color. This study concluded that carotenoids content in sweet potato has potential to replace artificial food coloring in food since it color was closely similar with sunset yellow artificial colorant.