Raw material pretreatment is important in order to significantly
increase the yield of lycopene extraction (Baysal et al., 2000;
Vasapollo et al., 2004; Ciurlia et al., 2009). For example, drying and
grinding processes influence the physical properties and quality of
raw material. The effect of particle size (ungrounded,
1.59 ± 0.12 mm and 1.05 ± 0.01 mm) on the recovery of lycopene
and b-carotene is shown in Fig. 6. As seen, the recovery of both lycopene
and b-carotene significantly increased with decreasing particle
size. Decreasing the particle size decreases mass transfer resistance