Lycopene, one of the major carotenoids in human diet, has been suggested as a healthful phytochemical compound. Recently, it is important to quantify lycopene content in the lycopene-containing foods. However, it has been difficult to analyze lycopene content in the lycopene-containing foods using a HPLC because lycopene is not fully extracted during sample pretreatment resulting in less reliable quantitative data. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of solvent on lycopene extraction from lycopene-containing foods for HPLC quantitative analysis. Two different solvents such as 100% acetone and methanol/acetone (1:1) mixture were used to extract lycopenefrom a commercial lycopene-enriched tomato concentrate (containing approximate 72 mg/g lycopene). All extracted samples were sonicated for 10 min, centrifuged, and filtered before injection into HPLC. The analysis of lycopene content was performed by an Ultimate3000 series HPLC system using a Unisol C18 column on UV detector at 450 nm. When the lycopene-enriched tomato concentrate was extracted using 100% acetone and methanol/acetone mixture for HPLC analysis, the lycopene contents were 75.88 and 39.84 (mg/g), respectively. As a result of quantitative analysis, acetone was able to extract lycopene fully from the lycopene-containing foods. The HPLC method established in this study might be useful to quantify lycopene in the lycopene-containing foods which are manufactured in various typessuchasbeverage, powder, tablet, and etc

• Changmin Lee(Department of Food Science and Technology, Sejong University)
• Sanghoon Ko(Department of Food Science and Technology, Sejong University)