LAUSR

Herein we report a comparison study of the quality characteristics of tomato paste produced under atmospheric conditions and vacuum evaporation. Tomato pulp (5 Brix) was evaporated under vacuum and at atmospheric pressure using a developed evaporation equipment for household application. Various quality i.e. a* and a*/b* color values, soluble solids content, dark speck amount, titratable acidity, lycopene content and sensory properties of tomato paste were compared. The final total soluble solid contents were not affected by evaporation method whereas the lycopene content in vacuum evaporated samples was found as higher than that in the atmospheric ones at the same soluble solid content. Overall preference scores of vacuum evaporated tomato paste have approximately equal scores with the paste produced at atmospheric conditions.