materials Fully ripened red colored tomatoes of ‘Vijeta’ variety were pro-cured from farmers of Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India.These were washed, crushed and used for the lycopene extrac-tion.The peels thusobtained were dried in hot air oven at 50◦C to 10% moisturecontent. These were ground in a grinder and were stored inair tight HDPE containers until further use.