Research

Life Sciences & Biotechnology

Title :

Development of processes for edible and industrial dyes from plant sources for enhanced income

Area of research :

Agricultural Sciences, Life Sciences & Biotechnology

Focus area :

Extraction of edible & industrial dyes from plant sources

Principal Investigator :

Dr Pamita Bhandari, Scientist, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT), Palampur

Timeline Start Year :

2020

Timeline End Year :

2022

Contact info :

Details

Executive Summary :

Objective: i. Standardization of extraction protocols for natural colors/dyes ii. Isolation and Characterization of dyes/colored compounds/fractions iii. Safety, stability and fastness studies in the area of cosmetics, food and textile industries.

Summary: Finding eco-friendly, non-toxic and sustainable sources at affordable prices for the value added products for food, pharmaceuticals, textile and cosmetics industry is essential and important for these sectors. With the public’s enhanced cognigance to eco-safety and health concerns, environmentally benignant and non-toxic bioresource products from sustainable resources, natural colours/dyes attracted researchers in traditional and diversified applications to develop effective, eco-friendly and cleaner process technologies. The usage of synthetic dyes in various domain of our life has detrimental effects on environment and associated allergic, toxic, carcinogenic and harmful responses. Therefore, more experimental implementations should be focused to adopt novel green technologies for making natural colorants as a compatible as well as eco-safe alternative with synthetic colorants in different aspects like food industry, cosmetic, pharmaceutical and textile industries. There are many plants available in India which contain natural colour. Therefore, investigations are needed to assess the real potential and availability of natural dyes yielding resources for propagation of species and an economical process for separation of dyes for commercial exploitation. Natural colour/dye extraction by conventional method shows poor technical performance. In view this, green, eco-friendly separation is thought to be techno economically attractive processes for colour/dye extraction, optimization and process development. This strategy for production of edible as well as other industrial dyes will promote our farmers economically for generating raw materials and will be helpful to industries in generation of employment.

Organizations involved