Plants are amazing sources of oxygen, food, medicine, spices, paper products, clothes and even dyes. For hundreds of years people from ancient cultures extracted pigments from plants, and mixed these pigments with various acids and bases to make colorful dyes for clothing and skin. Plants produce over 5,000 different pigments and use them in photosynthesis, photoprotection or “sunscreen,” to attract insects to flowers and fruits, and other processes. Join us to learn about the many roles of pigments in plants and discuss how some of these roles were discovered. We will then use things found right in your own home to extract pigments from plant material in or around your home, and explore the effects of adding acids and bases to pigment extracts in order to create natural dyes.
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About our speaker
Dr. Terri A. Long, Associate Professor, Department of Plant Microbial Biology, NC State University
“Anemia induced by iron deficiency is one of the most prevalent nutritional disorders in the world. Most people obtain nutritional iron predominantly from plants. Our research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that plants use to uptake, transport and utilize iron, and respond to low iron conditions. Ultimately this information may lead to the generation of crops with increased nutritional content and increased yield when grown in poor soils.”