Chloroplasts are reponsible for the green color of almost all plants and are lacking only in plants that do not make their own food, such as fungi and nongreen parasitic or saprophytic higher plants. The chloroplast contains chlorophyll pigments, as well as yellow and orange carotenoid pigments.
Chloroplasts are thus the central site of the photosynthetic process in plants.
The chloroplasts of algae are simpler than those of higher plants and may contain special, often conspicuous, starch-accumulating structures called pyrenoids.