The results in this study were in agreement of Javanmardi and Kubota (2006) that stated storage with low
temperature will cause lower lycopene content during storage. The rate of ripening processes which associate with
increasing of lycopene content in low temperature stored were slowed compare to room temperature stored tomatoes.
It has been also reported that the formation of lycopene depends on the temperature range between 12 °C and 32 °C
(Leoni, 1992). Further result reported by Turk et al (1994) that temperature to optimized lycopene content of tomato
was between 16–18 °C and 26 °C.
The visual appearance of water stress tomato showed darker red than no water stress tomato. Color parameter that
indicates this quality is redness (a*). According to Camelo and Gomez (2004), redness (a*) value will increase
sharply between stage 2 and 5 (breaker to light red) from negative (green color) to positive (red color) values and
will experiencing greatest change during storage. However, because the harvesting time of tomato used in this
research was at ripening stage (thin red stage), the redness changes values of water stress and no water stress
tomatoes were small. Redness value of no water stress tomato were lower compared to water stress tomato. The
redness (a*) changes during storage were different with the changes shown in lycopene content. These results
indicated that lycopene played major role in redness of tomato before ripening stage. After the storage, redness value
stopped to change while lycopene content continued to increase/decrease. Figure 1 showed the surface different of
lycopene content and redness value of ripe tomato during storage with various temperatures. Redness value of no
water stress tomato mostly decreased in all temperatures after day 4 of the storage, except for storage with 25 °C.
Water stress tomato showed stable trend of redness value after slight increased during 4 days storage.