الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Carotenoids are natural pigments belong to the most important pigmented groups due to their diversity, occurrence and distribution. They diverse from the pale yellow dark red colors. Pigments were obtained from number of bacteria, algae, fungi, flowers, birds, insects, fruits and vegetables. Recently, instead of depending on synthetically pigments which cause toxicity and carcinogenic diseases; natural pigments play important roles in protecting from photo oxidative damage (Kirti et al. 2014).Carotenoids are terpenoid pigments of 40 carbon atoms soluble principally in nonpolar solvents such as toluene, chloroform, hexane and benzene. According to chemical structure carotenoids can be divided into carotenes which are hydrocarbons, only contain C atom and H atom on their chemical structure such as β-carotene, α-carotene, lycopene and torulene; while xanthophylls the oxygenated derivatives of carotenes such as astaxanthin, torularhodin, zeaxanthin and lutein Mata-Gómez et al.(2014 b). Functionally carotenoids can be divided into provitamin A precursors which reduce the risk of the development of carcinogenic diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cataract and macular degeneration such as β-carotene, α-carotene and torularhodin (Maldonade et al., 2012); non-provitamin A compounds such as torulene, zeaxanthin, lycopene and astaxanthin (Table1).