betalain
/ˈbiːtəleɪn/
betalain noun: a class of red and yellow indole-derived water-soluble pigments found in beets and other plants of the Caryophyllales and used commercially as coloring agents.
Noun
betalain (plural betalains)
- A class of red and yellow indole-derived water-soluble pigments found in beets and other plants of the Caryophyllales and used commercially as coloring agents.
- Among the angiosperms, betalains are known only in the Caryophyllales, although they also occur in some Basidiomycetes.1981, Arthur Cronquist, An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants, page 237
- Neither the red betacyanins nor the other kind of betalain pigments, the yellow betaxanthins, are at all structurally related to the anthocyanins, and anthocyanins and betalains do not occur together in the same plant.1992, Frank B. Salisbury, Cleon W. Ross, Plant Physiology, 4th edition, page 325
Forms of betalain
| plural | betalains |
|---|
Origin of betalain
Coined to describe the pigments as derivatives from betalamic acid, from Latin bēta (“beet”), + -in.
Questions about betalain
- What does betalain mean?
- Betalain means a class of red and yellow indole-derived water-soluble pigments found in beets and other plants of the Caryophyllales and used commercially as coloring agents.
- What part of speech is betalain?
- Betalain is a noun.
- How do you pronounce betalain?
- Betalain is pronounced /ˈbiːtəleɪn/.
- What is the plural of betalain?
- The plural of betalain is betalains.
Words near betalain in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: betalain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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