Antioxidant activity of lycopene extracted from tomato paste towards trichloromethyl peroxyl radical CCl3O2·

The objectives of this paper were to evaluate the antioxidant activity of lycopene towards the trichloromethyl peroxyl radical (CCl3O2) and to obtain a precise rate constant using a pulse radiolysis technique. Lycopene was extracted and purified from tomato paste and its purity reached 95.0% (HPLC analysis). CCl3O2 was generated from a pulsed aqueous air-saturated solution of 2-propanol (2 M), acetone (1 M) and CCl4 (10−2 M). The observed spectrum showed an intense bleaching of the lycopene ground-state absorption in the region 350–450 nm and the bleaching rate constant was determined to be 1.17×109 M−1s−1, which indicated a rapid interaction between lycopene and CCl3O2.