Cereal Chem 45:124 - 132.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
An Examination of the Brown Pigments from Barley Leaves.

K. A. Claussen and E. H. Pepper. Copyright 1968 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Brown pigments were extracted from barley leaves infected by Helminthosporium sativum, barley leaves with nonparasitic spots, and leaves of black, Abyssinian barley. These pigments were subjected to chemical and physical tests for identification of melanin together with a commercial melanin, dopa melanin, tyrosine melanin, potato melanin, and the brown pigment from human hair. Histochemical tests for melanin were also made with leaf tissue sections of the pigmented barleys. The results suggest that the brown barley pigments from infected and physiologically spotted leaves are not true melanins. The brown pigment obtained from the Abyssinian barley more closely resembled the synthetic melanins. The behavior of the test materials supports the hypothesis that there are different forms of melanin, each varying according to its source. The methods for extracting melanin and the tests for identification of melanin were inadequate for detailed study. Chemical procedures were more useful than the UV and IR spectrophotometric analyses used in this study.