2018 ASHS Annual Conference

There are over 700 different carotenoids in nature. Carotenoids are the yellow, red, and orange pigments. They are found in plant chloroplasts and are used to protect plants from taking in too much light which can create reactive oxygen species. We see these pigments every day in our fruits and vegetables such as carrots, which contain high amounts of beta-carotene, an orange pigment. Xanthophylls are the yellow carotenoids. They make up one of the two major carotenoid groups. One specific xanthophyll, lutein, has been proven to aid improvement of cognitive health and decrease risks of age-related macular degeneration. The cognitive function that lutein helps with is memory loss. Macular degeneration is vision loss due to the wear and tear that happens to our eyes over time and after long exposure times to blue light. Lutein has been shown to be part of the macular pigment that sits on the nerves of the retina and help absorb the blue light that we are subjected to daily. Macular degeneration and memory loss risks increase with age, but what if it was possible to slow this process down? Chile peppers, Capsicum species fruits are one of the few fruits and vegetables that accumulate xanthophylls such as lutein. For this reason, forty-eight genetically diverse yellow chile peppers from New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute Teaching Garden and Leyendecker Plant Science Research Center were harvested for lutein and beta-carotene analysis. These peppers were cut up, frozen in liquid nitrogen, ground up and extracted. All carotenoids were extracted from the peppers. After extraction, peppers were filtered and qualitative analysis was done using thin-layer chromatography (TLC). Afterwards, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) along with carotenoid standards were used to quantify exact amounts of beta-carotene and lutein. These results found that five of the forty-eight yellow peppers were found to have high amounts of only lutein, while the other 43 peppers contained a mixture of carotenoids. This research profiled chile carotenoids, including lutein which has been shown to combat macular degeneration and aid in cognitive brain function. Future research will quantify the amount of lutein that is bioavailable to the body.