Extracción y microencapsulación de licopenos provenientes de residuos agroindustriales del tomate de árbol (Solanum betaceum)

Abstract

The present work is based on the extraction and microencapsulation of the bioactive compound lycopene present in the agroindustrial waste of the tomato tree (Solanum betaceum). An experimental design 32 was carried out, where the factors studied were: the vegetal material ratio / solvent volume (1:30, 1:50, 1:70) and the extraction time (30; 60; 120 min). From the results obtained, the percentages of extraction efficiency and the lycopene mass were calculated in one hundred grams of extracted solids, obtaining that the extraction process was optimized with a vegetal material for solvent volume ratio of 1:70 and a extraction time of 30 minutes. In order to increase the stability of the extracted lycopene, it was microencapsulated by spray drying, using maltodextrin and arabic gum as polymers, obtaining an efficiency of the microencapsulation process of 96.5 percent. Through the analysis of infrared spectrometry by Fourier Transforms (FTIR) the effectiveness of the microencapsulation process was corroborated. The antioxidant activity was checked by means of the DPPH technique (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydracil), since percentage values of DPPH inhibition were obtained for the lycopene-rich extract of 60.23 percent and for the 49.85 percent microencapsulation represented 686.73 and 287.34 μmol of Trolox in one gram of mass of solids extracted respectively.