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Discovering natural carotenoids for colour enhancement and health benefits of fish is important to develop new feed formulations. We have purified natural bixin from achiote seeds and evaluated the effect of colour enhancing and pigmentation in goldfish. Varying levels of bixin-based diets were prepared with 420 g kg À1 of crude protein and 120 g kg À1 of lipid content. Our results clearly showed that bixin (0.05, 0.10, 0.20 and 0.60 g kg À1 ) based diets significantly (P < 0.05) enhanced the skin and fin colour at 30 and 60 days compared to diet without bixin. Interestingly, diet which contains 0.20 g kg À1 bixin and commercial feed (with astaxanthin) had similar effect on carotenoid deposition in skin. Moreover, total carotenoid deposition in fin was higher than in skin of all bixin-containing diets. However, 0.60 g kg À1 bixin-containing diet had lower specific growth rate (1.01 AE 0.01) and higher feed conversion ratio (2.05 AE 0.19) compared to the control group. The present results demonstrate that achiote bixin can be successfully used as an alternative natural carotenoid source against synthetic astaxanthin in fish feed. Our data indicate that 0.20 g kg À1 is a suitable dietary level of bixin to ensure strong pigmentation, acceptable growth and feed utilization in goldfish.

KEY WORDS: electrophoresis, fish meat, malonaldehyde, protein carbonyls, salt soluble protein.

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