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trans-Violaxanthin, is a Carotenoid dye. It is a natural xanthophyll pigment with an orange color found in a variety of plants including pansies. It is approved to be used as a food additive and food coloring.

Violaxanthin has been used as a standard/control in high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of pigment extracts to confirm the high-level astaxanthin accumulation suspected from the visual phenotype of?Nt-AXT plants.

ChEBI: All-trans-violaxanthin is the all-trans-stereoisomer of violaxanthin. It has a role as a food colouring.

Violaxanthins are natural pigmented constituents or carotenoids present in most fruits and vegetables.

Violaxanthin is a carotene epoxide that is a precursor to capsanthin. It is one of three xanthophylls involved in the evolution of plastids of green plants (oxygen evolution) and participating in photo-induced interconversions known as the violaxanthin cycle. The cleavage of 9-cis-epoxycarotenoids (violaxanthin) to xanthoxin is the key regulatory step of abscisic acid biosynthesis.

Also purify it by column chromatography, and the purity is checked by TLC (see -carotene). It has at 415, 440 and 469nm. [Kuhn & Winterstein Ber 64 326 1931, Karrer et al. max Helv Chim Acta 14 1044 1931, Absolute Config: Bartlett et al. J Chem Soc (C) 2527 1969, Beilstein 19 III/IV 1139.]