Evaluation of the Pretreatment of Tomato Waste as Support for the Recovery of Carotenoids Through Solid-State Fermentation Assisted Extraction (SSFAE)

The present work evaluates different methods of tomato waste dehydration to assess the effect of different treatments on the recovery of carotenoids by solid-state fermentation assisted extraction. The importance of this work lies in the evaluation of the pretreatments applied to agro-industrial food waste on the fermentative model and the influence on the recovered biocompounds.

The tomato waste samples were dehydrated by conventional oven at different temperatures (40 °C, 50 °C, and 60 °C) and other freeze-dried samples. Using previously studied fermentation conditions with a moisture of 65%, inoculum size 1 × 10⁶ spores/g, pH 4, and evaluating different incubation temperatures (25 °C, 28 °C, 30 °C, and 33 °C).

The results were quantified, identifying that the tomato samples dehydrated at 60 °C by conventional oven and incubated at 25 °C once fermentation was ready, allowing the recovery of 0.666 ± 0.059 mg/g dw of total carotenoids equivalents.

This study demonstrates the influence that pretreatment can have on plant material intended to be used as substrate or support for solid-state fermentation as an extraction method. The proper characterization of the sample can enhance the benefits of the compounds of interest.