Carotenoids: Nutrition, Analysis and Technology

Book Preface

The beauty of nature never ceases to surprise: the countless number of shapes and forms, a large diversity of fragrances and sounds, the unlimited palette of colors.  Every day, we perceive through the senses her breathtaking majesty. The reality seen with the eyes is a mixture, the collage of rays of visible light reflected by the objects. This incredible composition comes onto the retina where, thanks to the light sensitive cells called cones, the perception of the color is achieved. After the numerous physical and biochemical processes that convert a light stimulus into nervous stimulus, an image of the world creates itself in the brain. However, the leaves on the trees would never be green and the ripe tomatoes would not be red without the presence of natural pigments. Plants are equipped with sophisticated chemical compounds that absorb a part of the vital sunlight energy for use in photosynthesis and to give them color. One of them, carotenoids, are the second most abundant (after chlorophylls) pigments in nature, currently comprising over 700 specimens [1, 2]. They are responsible for the yellow, orange, and red color of fruits [3], flowers [4], seeds [5], flamingos [6–8], shrimp [9], and various other higher animals [7, 10, 11]. The deep color of these pigments is also characteristic for various simple organisms, such as yeast [12, 13], fungi [14, 15], and algae [16, 17], being natural carotenoid producers. Carotenoids generally cannot be synthesized by animals, but they are necessary in their diets and involved in many purposes, for example, lutein and zeaxanthin accumulate in the human eye and serve as photoprotectants against damaging effects of free radicals [18, 19]. So, without these pigments, we cannot see the beauty painted by them. Carotenoids are ubiquitous in all kingdoms of living organisms and provide various pivotal functions resulting from their structural diversity.