ABSTRACT
The present study proposes a green extraction approach for the recovery of lycopene from tomato fruits. Different hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvents (HNADESs) based on terpenes (i.e., menthol and thymol) and fatty acids (i.e., decanoic acid and dodecanoic acid) were prepared at different molar ratios, characterised in terms of density, rheological properties, and Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, and were examined for their effectiveness to extract lycopene from tomato. Response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimise the extraction parameters, namely duration (min) and solvent:solid ratio (v/w). Spectrophotometry and RP-HPLC-DAD were used in order to monitor the process efficiency. The combination of decanoic acid and dodecanoic acid was found to exhibit comparable extraction capacity to acetone. Taking into account that the HNADESs used in the present study are considered green, biodegradable and of low cost, the obtained carotenoid rich extracts are expected to be of use in industrial food applications.