Synopsis Summary:


Purpose: As the awareness level of people about the deleterious effects of synthetic colours increases, the demand of natural colorants for food, drugs, cosmetics, textiles, etc is expected to increase enormously, and the manufactures in these sectors want to shift to natural colours as soon as possible, because of both legal and consumer acceptance reasons, Ixora (Rubiaceae) is an ornament plant. This project suggests that food and fabric color can be produced from the dry as well as fresh extract obtained from Ixora flowers petals. This plant is chosen because a red and pink dye can be obtained from the plant, which has good demand in food and fabric industry.

Procedure: Fresh petals of Ixora are soaked in distilled water, chopped, ground separately squeezed; pressed, filtered and aqueous extract is made out of it. The extract is mixed in various concentrations with rice batter to make idly. The cooked Idlies are observed for the colour. Ice cream and milk were also prepared using the dry powder of Ixora (red and pink). The prepared ice cream and milk were observed and tasted. The extract is mixed with various amount of Nacl for fabric coloring and was observed.

Observation: The prepared dishes had a pleasing red and pink colour. The dishes which contain food colour were tasted by students to compare the taste with the non coloured dishes. These observations were tabulated. The food tasted normally. The colour of fabric is strawberry red.

Conclusion: This project demonstrates the coloring effect of Ixora. Hence food and fabric color from Ixora may be a good substitute for artificial dyes.

Future Scope: Ixora is available in several species with different colours. Hence different colours may be obtained from different species of the same plant.