S. crassifolium J.Agardh is one of the brown seaweed species which is abundant and widespread in Indonesian waters. This species of brown seaweed has been used as a source of food and medicine, one of them is in the form of alginates. So far, the common process of manufacturing alginates eliminates a lot of the pigment in that seaweed. S. crassifolium J.Agardh is rich in various types of pigments that have benefits for health. This type of seaweed has chlorophyll a and fucoxanthin as its

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... t pigment. The aim of this research is to determine the content and composition of the pigment of S. crassifolium J.Agardh on fresh and drying treatment. The drying treatment includes open air sun drying (SD), dehumidifier, and solar tunnel dryer (STD). Pigment identification process is carried out by the method of thin layer chromatography (TLC), spectrophotometer and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Analysis of the pigment content was carried out by the method based on the theory of Maeda et al. (2005) using HPLC. Based on the results of the research on the fresh extract of S. crassifolium J.Agardh, several types of pigment and their percentage are obtained, which are: chlorophyll a (68.37%); fucoxanthin (20.68%) and xantophyll (10.95%). On the drying process, xantophyll and fucoxanthin were increased, on STD (16.17% and 28.96%); SD (21.34% and 43.43%); dehumidifier (15.98% and 34.07%). The drying process also causes the formation of pheophytin on STD and SD treatments which are 48.09% and 35.32% respectively, as well as the increment of xantophyll content.Keyword: drying treatment, pheophytin, S. crassifolium, xanthophyll.This paper was published in Proceeding of Natural Pigment of South East Asia Conference 2010