TY - JOUR AU - Santamaría, Leonardo AU - Martínez, María L. AU - Asenjo, Conrado F. PY - 2022/01/20 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Nature of the Vitamin A Activity of Annatto Seed (Bixa orellana L.) JF - The Journal of Agriculture of the University of Puerto Rico JA - JAUPR VL - 49 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.46429/jaupr.v49i2.13025 UR - https://revistas.upr.edu/index.php/jaupr/article/view/13025 SP - 259-268 AB - The high vitamin A activity of the petroleum ether extract of the annatto seed has been confirmed. It ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 international units of vitamin A per gram of extract. It was found that a standard mixture of 3-percent acetone in petroleum ether did not remove any vitamin A-active material from a magnesium oxide-hyflo supercel column, on which a petroleum ether extract of annatto had been chromatographed. The only solvent among those tried, that effectively removed the material which was left absorbed on the column after elution with acetone-petroleum ether was methanol. The methanol extract exhibited a biological activity of about the same order of magnitude as the original petroleum ether extract, that is, 1,000 to 2,000 international units of vitamin A. ER -