Isolation and identification of one kind of yellow pigments from model reaction systems related to garlic greening

It was established that green pigment(s) responsible for garlic greening is composed of yellow and blue species, and pyruvic acid (a product from 1-PeCSO or 2-PeCSO under the action of alliinase) reacted with pigment precursor (PP) model compounds, 2-(1H-pyrrolyl) carboxylic acids to produce yellow pigments. However, the structure of the yellow pigments is unknown. In present paper, we identified three yellow pigments (Y1, Y2 and Y3) from three reaction systems containing pyruvic acid and 2-(1H-pyrrolyl) acetic acid (P-Gly) or 1-(2′-methyl-1′-carboxy-propyl) pyrrole (P-Val) or 1-(2′-methyl-1′-carboxy-butyl) pyrrole (P-Ile), respectively, by LC-ESI MS/MS and IT-TOF mass spectrometry. The three pigments have a UV/visible maximum absorbance between 400 and 434 nm and might be formed by dimerisation of the three corresponding PP under participation of pyruvic acid, molecular formula of which are C16H16N2O4 (Y1), C22H28N2O4 (Y2) and C24H32N2O4 (Y3), respectively.