Studies on Lycopene Extracted from Grapefruit during Storage

Carotenoids with their vast health beneficial properties have emerged to be a potent nutraceutical with lycopene as the most prominent among other carotenoids. Lycopene is one of the most promising bioactive compound because of its potential to inhibit invasion of free radicals at membrane surface which triggers the primary defence mechanism of human body against several chronic diseases. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the stability of lycopene extracted from grapefruit at different temperature regimes (3°C, 10°C and 21°C) over a period of 30 days. First-order kinetic model and Weibull models were applied to describe the degradation of lycopene over time. The R2 values (0.99) indicated a good fit to the experimental data. Results showed that lycopene was stable at lower temperature regime.