Extraction and Chromatography of Plant Pigments

... Extraction and Chromatography of Plant Pigments Aim: To extract the following plant pigments carotenoids and chlorophyll from tomato and spinach samples. Introduction Chlorophyll is one of the pigment that can be found in fruits and vegetables which gives plant such as spinach its green colour, carotenoid on the other hand gives the orange / yellow colour of fruit such as tomato. The presence of these two pigments apart from the colour they give plants, fruits and vegetables, they are also very useful for photosynthesis. There are different other types of pigments that adds to the colours of many other plants but chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and ?-Carotene will be mentioned. Experimental Procedure Spinach * Spinach (10g) was weighed and crushed in methanol (25cm3) using a pestle and mortar. * The methanolic solution was decanted carefully by pressing the spinach to free the solvent as much as possible; the methanolic solution obtained was discarded. * The spinach

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