Enhancing the lycopene in vitro bioaccessibility of tomato juice synergistically applying thermal and non-thermal processing technologies

- Impact of processing methods on tomato lycopene bioaccessibility studied.
- Pulse electric field treatment enhanced the lycopene bioaccessibility of tomato.
- Blanching & thermal processing reduced lycopene release during digestion.
- Combined thermal & non-thermal treatments enhanced lycopene bioaccessibility.

The influence of moderate intensity pulsed electric field pre-processing on increasing the lycopene bioaccessibility of tomato fruit, and the combined effect of blanching, ultrasonic and high intensity pulsed electric field processing on further enhancement of the lycopene bioaccessibility after juicing were investigated. Maximum total lycopene bioaccessibility (9.6%) of the tomato fruit was achieved by a 4 μs pre-processed treatment after 24 h holding period and further processing results revealed that all treatments were effective to increase the total lycopene. Most of juice processing treatments decreased the release of lycopene from the tomato matrix during digestion. Only the treatment of blanching followed by high intensity pulsed electric field showed a significant release of trans-(4.01 ± 0.48) and cis-(5.04 ± 0.26 μg/g) lycopene, achieving 15.6% total lycopene bioaccessibility. Thus, processing of pre-blanched juice using high intensity pulsed electric field, derived from pre-processed tomato was the best overall process to achieve the highest nutritive value.