Lycopenewas extractedfollowing the

Lycopenewas extractedfollowing the method developed byFish, Perkins-Veazie, and Collins (2002). A 0.50 0.01 g of tomato was ground in a mortar together with 1 mL of distilled water. Tomato pastes were transferred to light-protected glass tubes with the addition of 5 mL of a 0.5 g L1 butylated hydroxytoluene ( BHT ) solutioninacetone; subsequently, 5mL of95% ( v/v)aqueousethanol and 10 mL of hexane were added. For lycopene extraction, the tubes were vortexed for 10 min. A supernatant aliquot (3.5 mL) was pipetted out and transferred to a quartz spectrophotometric cell. Absorbance was measured at 503 nm in a PerkineElmer Lamba 35 UV/Vis spectrophotometer. The following equation was used to determine the amount of lycopene in tomato samples (Fish et al., 2002):