Carthamin is a natural red pigment derived from safflower (''

Carthamus tinctorius Safflower (''Carthamus tinctorius'') is a highly branched, herbaceous, thistle-like annual plant in the family Asteraceae. It is commercially cultivated for vegetable oil extracted from the seeds and was used by the early Spanish colonies al ...

''), earlier known as carthamine.De Candolle, Alphonse. (1885.
''Origin of cultivated plants.''
D. Appleton & Co.: New York, p. 164. Retrieved on 2007-09-25. It is used as a dye and a food coloring. As a

food additive Food additives are substances added to food to preserve Taste, flavor or enhance taste, appearance, or other sensory qualities. Some additives have been used for centuries as part of an effort to preserve food, for example vinegar (pickling), sal ...

, it is known as Natural Red 26. Safflower has been cultivated since ancient times, and carthamin was used as a dye in ancient Egypt. It was used extensively in the past for dyeing wool for the carpet industry in European countries, and in the dyeing of silk and the creation of cosmetics in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, where the color is called ; however, due to the expensive nature of the dye, Japanese safflower dyestuffs were sometimes diluted with other dyes, such as

turmeric Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast ...

and sappan. It competed with the early synthetic dye fuchsine as a silk dye after fuchsine's 1859 discovery. Carthamin is composed of two

chalconoid Chalconoids Greek: χαλκός ''khalkós'', " copper", due to its color), also known as ''chalcones'', are natural phenols related to chalcone. They form the central core for a variety of important biological compounds. They show antibacterial, ...

s; the conjugated bonds being the cause of the red color. It is derived from precarthamin by a decarboxylase. It should not be confused with carthamidin, another flavonoid. The carthamin is biosynthesized from a

chalcone Chalcone is the organic compound C6H5C(O)CH=CHC6H5. It is an α,β-unsaturated ketone. A variety of important biological compounds are known collectively as chalcones or chalconoids. Chemical properties Chalcones have two absorption maxima at ...

( 2,4,6,4'-tetrahydroxychalcone) and two

glucose Glucose is a simple sugar with the molecular formula . Glucose is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. Glucose is mainly made by plants and most algae during photosynthesis from water and carbon dioxide, u ...

molecules to give safflor yellow A and with other glucose molecule, safflor yellow B. The next step is the formation of precarthamin and finally carthamin. Carthamin proposed biosynthesis

References

{{Glycosides Phenol dyes Food colorings Chalconoid glucosides Cyclohexenes Hydroxymethyl compounds