Carotenoid pigments of Badami mango fruit.

The only attempt at the isolation of carotene from mango fruit seems to have been made by Yamamoto Osima & Goma (1932) who obtained 60 mg. of a crystalline preparation from 38 kg., of fresh fruit pulp. From a study of its optical activity and absorption spectrum they concluded that it was a mixture of aand P-carotenes, which were, however, not separated. The inconclusive nature of their data has led us to re-investigate the carotenoid pigments of the mango fruit by the technique of chromatographic adsorption. Earlier work from this laboratory (Ramasarma & Banerjee, 1938), as also elsewhere (Crawford & Perry, 1933; De, 1937), has shown that certain varieties of the mango fruiit are very rich in carotene. The Badami mango fruit (almost the same as the famous Alfonso variety of Bombay) has been chosen for the present investigation, since it was found to be richer in carotene than any other variety so far studied. A preliminary experiment of a qualitative nature showed that the mango xanthophylls are mostly in the form of esters and that nearly all of the epiphasic pigment is P-carotene (50 mg. per kg. of fresh pulp). EXPERIMENTAL