The results showed that drying fresh tomato
under sun or inside solar drier did not affect the rate of
lycopene degradation. Mechanism causing the lycopene degradation
in the sun and solar dried samples could have been
different. Apart from the heat which was present in both the
drying methods, the sun dried samples were directly exposed
to solar radiations and light, which might have played an additional
role in lycopene degradation in case of sun dried samples
causing an insignificantly lower lycopene content in sun
dried samples compared to solar dried samples.