New perspectives in detection of lycopene in tomato based foods

Photoacoustic (PA) spectroscopy and the Optothermal Window (OW) method both suitable for investigation of optically opaque samples were compared in terms of their capability to quantify lycopene in a variety of processed tomato-based products. The experiments were performed at 25 Hz and 502 nm radiation provided by argon laser. The correlation between beta.mu values obtained by PA and OW methods (with argon laser emitting 502 nm radiation as the excitation source) and data attained by spectrophotometry and HPLC is very good.