Because of the high nutritional value of anthocyanin in purple sweet potatoes (TN57), the stability and quality of anthocyanin in purple sweet potatoes during and after the processing were investigated in this study. First of all, the extraction methods with different parameters, such as temperature, time, solid-liquid ratio, pH value, and solvent were employed to get better extraction efficiencies. After that, DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) and ABTS (2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenz thiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) were used to evaluate the anti-oxidation ability of the extracts. Lastly, the thermal degradation kinetics and photodegradation were used to obtain important degradation factors including the content of anthocyanin residue, degradation index (DI), color parameters, reaction rate (k), and chromatic aberration (ΔE). We found that the extraction condition as using 60% ethanol with 1% citric acid under 80 °C for 40 min was optimal for purple sweet potatoes, which obtained antioxidant capacity as 333 μM TE DPPH, 376 μM TE ABTS+, and 593.6 μM TE ferric ion reducing antioxidant power (FRAP). The results indicate that the most important parameter for the stability of anthocyanin in the purple sweet potato extract (PSPAE) was the pH value rather than temperature. In addition, there was no significant difference in chromatic aberration between the light and dark storage conditions under 37 °C. Thus, PSPAE has the potential to be developed as health foods and drinks rich in anthocyanin.
Keywords: anthocyanin; antioxidant capability; degradation; purple sweet potato.