Natural Colorants based Composite and Its Multifunctional Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays natural colorant has received a considerable attention owing to the several disadvantages of synthetic colorants. Moreover, there is a growing consumer demands for the natural toxic free materials in food, pharmaceuticals, textiles and other essential commodities.  It is well established that the natural pigments are advantageous over the synthetic counterparts as the synthetic colorants or pigments have many side effects such as toxicity, intolerance, harmful for health and environment, etc. The natural colorant such as anthocyanin, chlorophyll, curcumin, melanin, betalains, carotenoids, etc. have good potential to substitute the harmful synthetic color. The natural pigments are not only safe but also provide other several benefits like antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, etc. properties which are useful for food packaging and pharmaceutical applications. Therefore, the natural pigments/colorant can be beneficial for multifunctional applications. As a consequence, recently the natural colorant based research has developed lot of interest from multidisciplinary scientific communities. Although the properties of the natural colorant are promising but sometime their low stability, less temperature lability and difficulty in large scale extraction make it challenging in application. Encapsulation of color is one of the effective ways to improve the stability. Still more research on advancement of natural colorant is needed to address this issue. It is noteworthy to mention that the future of natural colorant is promising and more research on this topic is anticipated.

The primary aim of this research topic is to assemble current research (article or review) work on natural pigments and multifunctional applications. The main goal of this research topic is to collect articles and review on recent development in natural colorant, its composite, and their multifaceted applications.

Dr. Swarup Roy
Dr. Wanli Zhang
Dr. Łukasz Łopusiewicz
Guest Editors

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• biopolymers
• biomaterials
• pigments
• bioactivity
• functional materials
• bioactive natural compounds
• natural colorant
• plant extract
• functional composite
• composite film and coatings
• food and health application
• smart packaging