Preliminary Study on the Supercritical CO_2 Extraction of Lycopene from Autumn Olive Fruit

Autumn olive was recognized as a novel resource of food,because it contained the plenty of lycopene. In this study,an attempt was made to apply supercritical CO2 extraction technique in the extraction of lycopene from the fruit of autumn olive,including the optimum of pressure,temperature and co-extraction species. Data of this study showed that an increase in pressure and the application of co-extraction solvent resulted in an improvement of extraction efficiency. Additionally,extract by supercritical CO2 extraction contained more lycopene than that by solvent extraction. If a progress can be made in the improvement of extraction efficiency,supercritical fluid extraction will be an alternative to extract lycopene from the fruit of autumn olive.