Comparative studies on lycopene content from various Malaysian colour fruits

The present studies focus on lycopene on various Malaysian colour fruits which were papaya , pink guava and rambutan peels on which lycopene have medicinal values. Extraction of lycopene with organic solvents to obtain more efficiency and less toxic is desired. Single and combination of solvents used for extraction purpose which were chloroform, hexane, dichloromethane and ethanol. Concentration of lycopene also determined for three sample of fruit extracts through calculation method and also from calibration curve obtained from UV spectrophotometer. Results shows that pink guava have highest lycopene content which was 2.813 μg followed by papaya with 2.08 μg and rambutan peels having 1.00 μg which was obtained by calculation from calibration curve. The elution time for lycopene using Chi Hua Lu et a1.,2008 was at 6th minutes and for the Naviglio el a1.,2008 method was at 13th minutes from HPLC graph. Since different method using different solvent extraction suggest that papayas caretenoid solublised in chloroform better and for ethanol extract pink guavas caretenoid more readily dissolved. Rambutan peels also showing to have lycopene thus further study should be done to obtain lycopene in large scale to boost pharmaceutical industry because peels actually low cost raw material. Cultivation of more Malaysian fruits in large scale should be conducted.