Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.
Blue is not a common color in nature. And while there are some known blue fruits, few contain pigments in that shade. Blueberries, for instance, contain a heaping amount of anthocyanin, a skin pigment that should give each sphere a dark red color.
But structures in the fruits’ waxy outer layers can create their own blues. Devising ways to mimic a blueberry’s color-forming coating might one day provide a new way to give plastics or makeup a blue tint. “Using this kind of coloring is cool because it doesn’t stain,” says Rox Middleton, a physicist at the University of Bristol in England and Dresden University of Technology in Germany.
To better understand what is special about the berries’ waxy coverings, Middleton and colleagues looked at a variety of fruits under a scanning electron microscope. The resulting images showed an assortment of tiny molecular structures. Additional optical experiments revealed that all the structures scatter blue and UV light.
These scanning electron microscope images reveal the finer details of blue-colored fruit skins. The nanostructures found in blueberries reflect blue and ultraviolet light, covering up dark red anthocyanin pigments found underneath the waxy coating in the fruit’s skin. Similar structures found in Oregon grapes and plums also make the fruits appear blue.These scanning electron microscope images reveal the finer details of blue-colored fruit skins.
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