Biosynthesis of highly enriched 13C-lycopene for human metabolic studies using repeated batch tomato cell culturing with 13C-glucose

► Plant cell culturing strategies to yield highly enriched 13C-lycopene are proposed. ► Three repeated growth cycles with 13C-glucose media increased % of [U]-13C-lycopene from 14% to 49%. ► 2-Phase 13C-loading and labelling strategy yields 55% [U]-13C-lycopene. ► 2-Phase 13C-loading and labelling strategy yields 93% 13C-atom% pure lycopene. ► Acetone extraction recovers 4-fold more lycopene than hexane-ethanol-water.