Flowering plants have interesting potential as sources of pigments for use in food products. This research focuses on the carotenoid composition of five commonly grown garden flowers that bloom year-round and that have adapted well to the environmental conditions in Tamil Nadu and may be of commercial value as sources of carotenoids. The five selected flowers are divided into five different families: Apocynaceae, Boraginaceae, Fabaceae, Cucurbitaceae and Malvaceae. The colors of the selected flowers are varying from yellow to red. In this work the carotenoid pigments were extracted, separated and identified and quantified for their potential use as low-cost and abundant sources in the food industries.The majority methods of extraction of carotenoids from plant sources make use of organic solvents such as hexane, ethanol, methanol, tetrahydrofuran, benzene, and petroleum ether. It has been observed that the stability of carotenoid extract obtained with hexane, acetone, ethanol was higher than that of extracts obtained with other organic solvents, such as chloroform, methanol or dichromate. The proposed work was done by Soxhlet method and all metrics were analyzed by high performance factor Concentration of     β-carotene (μg/g).

Keywords:

Colored Flowers,Carotenoid, Organic Solvents, Screening, β-carotene