The invention discloses a method for preparing high-purity annatto. The method comprises the following steps of: adding annatto seeds to an
alcohol or
acetone aqueous solution; stirring at 30-60 DEG C and separating
solid and liquid to obtain an annatto extracting solution; enriching and desorbing the annatto extracting solution through absorption resin; and decompressing, concentrating, crystallizing and
drying an obtained desorbing solution to obtain an annatto
crystal. In the invention, because macroporous absorption resin is adopted to enrich the annatto, most high-polarity impurities canbe removed, therefore, the
clarity and the quality of the extracting solution are improved; a discontinuous gradient desorbing method is adopted in the desorbing process, and a low-concentration
alcohol sluicing resin column can be used for removing most polysaccharides and strong-polarity impurities adsorbed by the resin; and then the high-concentration
alcohol is used for desorbing to ensure that the desorbing solution quality is greatly improved, which is beneficial to subsequent
crystallization. An obtained product has high purity, wherein shown as detection, the content of HPLC (
High Performance Liquid Chromatography) is larger than 95 percent, and the yield reaches higher than 80 percent, thus the invention provides a
safer technical guarantee for producing
officinal grade raw materials, has low extracting cost and is suitable for industrial production.