Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXII, Issue 1
Written by Elena BONCIU, Dorina BONEA
Currently, most processed foods purchased from supermarkets contain one or more food colorants. One of the bestknown colorants is the so-called red dye for eggs, used during the Easter religious holiday. The purpose of this paper was to highlight the mitodepresive and genotoxic effect of an assortment of red dye for eggs to meristematic cells of onion (Allium cepa). Three different concentrations (0.5, 1 and 1.5%) were used, the exposure time being 3 hours. The results obtained revealed a strong mitodepresive effect of food colorant to A. cepa, by decreasing of the mitotic index as the concentration of colorant increased. Also, a genotoxic effect has been observed by the occurrence of some chromosomal aberrations and nuclear alterations, such as sticky and vagrants chromosomes, multinucleated cells and cells with nuclear erosion. These results suggest prudence in using the red dye for eggs and finding other alternative and ecological solutions such as, for example, the use of some plant extracts for this purpose.
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