Stability study of lycopene-loaded lipid-core nanocapsules under temperature and photosensitization

• Stability of lycopene nanocapsules at photosensitization, heating and freezing.
• Technique of interfacial deposition of preformed polymer.
• Nanoencapsulation increased the stability of lycopene.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the stability of nanoencapsulated lycopene (LYC-LNC) prepared by interfacial deposition of preformed poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) during photosensitization (5 °C–25 °C), heating (60 °C–80 °C) and refrigeration (5 °C). LYC-LNC presented a concentration of 80.71 μg/mL and was also analyzed in terms of mean diameter, zeta potential and morphology, as well as the position of the lycopene in the particle. During photosensitization and heating in air-saturated conditions, LYC-LNC showed activation energy of 67 kcal/mol and 24.9 kcal/mol, respectively. Those values were superior to that of free lycopene as found in the literature for both experiments. During refrigeration at 5 °C, the mean diameter and zeta potential of LYC-LNC remained stable for 84 days and presented approximately 40% of lycopene content. All experiments suggest that nanoencapsulation improves the stability of lycopene under different processing conditions.

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