**1. Introduction**

To date, adding coloring to food and drink color is as significant as it has always been, especially in a society where the quantity of processed food has increased rapidly over the previous half-century. Being the first attribute that potential buyers are aware of, color plays a vital role in motivating the customer to purchase the product [1]. Over the last few years, the food industry's interest in natural colorants replacing synthetic ones has increased, mainly due to safety issues [2]. Among natural alternatives for synthetic dyes, anthocyanins represent an important class of compounds that provide red to a blue color to food by incorporating into aqueous systems. Also, in the European Union and Japan, anthocyanins are recognized as food colorants with the code E-163 [3].

Purple corn (*Zea mays* L.) represents a rich source of anthocyanins, originated in South America, mainly Peru, and cultivated also in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. Generally, it is used for the preparation of traditional drinks and desserts, generating important quantities of residues, and its disposal involves major economic expenses [4, 5]. Besides this, generated wastes can cause major environmental problems due

to their high organic charge. However, over the last decades, using these residues has been encouraged as they are good sources of potentially useful bioactive chemicals, and valorizing them might be a viable technique for mitigating their environmental implications and thereby improving the food industry's sustainability [5].

As a major route for their valorization, the recovery of bioactive molecules from food by-products has gained popularity. In this framework, the present review aims to highlight purple cob's capability to be an available source of bioactive compounds with several potential applications, focusing our work on its food industry utilization.
