Abstract: Anthocyanins are a kind of widely spread natural colorant, which have raised great interest due to its potent physiological and nutritional effects. Although the great potential of application that anthocyanins represent for food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, their use has been limited because of lack of knowledge about its chemical properties, deficient extraction and identification technology. Currently, many researches are focused on resoling the difficulties. In this paper, the recently advances in anthocyanins research filed are summarised from three parts: anthocyanins chemical characterizations; extraction and separation technologies; and identification methods.

Key words: anthocyanins, high performance liquid chromatography, high speed countercurrent chromatography, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, review