The Amazonian flora presents a wide diversity of plants, fruits and flowers that have
aroused great interest in science. Among these, bacupari, pupunha and tucumã stand out,
which boast a wide availability of pigments, being alternatives for application in the food
and pharmaceutical industries. Color is considered the main organoleptic attribute when
it comes to acceptance and preference of a food and the use of additives, with the aim of
making it visually attractive, is common in industries, but there are suspicions that
artificial colorings have potential effects harmful to human health, and there is a need to
replace them with natural dyes. Carotenoids are natural pigments, found in fruits and
vegetables, which play an important role in photosynthesis and photoprotection, however
they are unstable compounds in the presence of high temperatures, light and oxygen,
demonstrating difficulties in maintaining their properties when subjected to certain
intrinsic conditions of various products. Microencapsulation is a process based on the
confinement of active substances in microcapsules, which can provide protection against
unstable factors. Therefore, the objective of this work was to elaborate, characterize and
evaluate the stability of microcapsules, containing natural pigments extracted from the
peel of Amazonian fruits (bacupari, pupunha and tucumã), aiming at their application in
foods as a natural dye.
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