The invention discloses a
gardenia blue
pigment as well as a preparation method and application thereof, and the preparation method comprises the following steps: adding neutral
amino acid or
arginine with the molecular weight greater than 130 into a
phosphate solution containing
genipin, and reacting under the condition that the pH is 4-10 to obtain a reaction solution; the reaction solution is sequentially eluted through a
macroporous resin chromatographic column, water and 30%-80% ethyl
alcohol, a developed ethyl
alcohol eluent is collected, vacuum concentration and
drying are conducted, and the
gardenia blue
pigment is obtained. According to the method, the
phosphate solution is adopted as a catalyst to catalyze the
genipin to react with the preferable
arginine and the specific neutral
amino acid to synthesize the high-tone
gardenia blue
pigment, meanwhile, the
reaction temperature and time are regulated and controlled, the quality of the gardenia blue pigment is improved, the characteristic
lambda max of the
visible spectrum of the gardenia blue pigment is not lower than 602 nm, and A610 / A585 is not lower than 1.0; the prepared high-tone gardenia blue pigment is safe and non-toxic, and can be applied as a coloring agent in the fields of food,
cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.