TECHNOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION OF PURPLE CORN (ZEA MAYS L.)

The Corn (Zea mays L.) is a grass belonging to the family Poaceae. The purple corn, a distinct corn variety, is known to have a high content of anthocyanin pigments group belonging to the class of flavonoids. The objective of this research was to conduct a survey, based on the search for patents and scientific production, in order to evaluate all the information and present an overview of technological and scientific development and with that to understand the state of the art, areas of interest and applications of purple corn. The searches were conducted in INPI patent databases, EPO, WIPO and USPTO and the periodic bases Web of Science and Scopus. Only one patent application was found on the INPI basis. And according to IPC (International Patent Classification), A23 class was the most comprehensive. With the refinement of the searches, it is observed that the terms medicine, cancer and food additive are the ones that stand out, which shows that the purple maize has potential to be explored. Most of the articles published in Brazil are focused on Agriculture and food technology with exploitation of the antioxidant activity, and the low number of publications (despite the increase of studies in the last decade) related to purple maize may be due to the fact that the variety is not widespread. Overall, prospecting shows that purple maize has the potential to be exploited in a very promising way.