Rapid assessment of lycopene and β-carotene in spiny bitter gourd (Momordica cochinchinensis (Lour.) Spreng)

A simple spectrophotometric method was developed for the analysis of lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoids in the spiny bitter gourd. lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoids were extracted from spiny bitter gourd aril samples using three accelerated solvent extraction methods. the supernatants of the extracted samples were then analyzed for carotenoids using spectrophotometry at the wavelengths of 450,470 and 502 nm. the proposed method was validated for its analytical performance parameters including simplicity,accuracy and effectiveness. the method was applied to the determination of lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoids in 43 spiny bitter gourd genotypes. over all genotypes,the lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoidscontents obtained using the proposed spectrophotometric method were not significantly different from those obtained from hplc methods. a spiny bitter gourd genotype with high lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoids was identified by the hplc method,and this result was similar to the results of the spectrophotometric method. the highest positive correlation was found between hplc and spectrophotometric method iii for lycopene (r = 0.94; p≤0.01),β-carotene (r = 0.92; p≤0.01) and total carotenoids (r = 0.93; p≤0.01). the results indicated that the present spectrophotometric method could be used as an alternative to chromatographic analysis for the determination of the lycopene,β-carotene and total carotenoids contents in spiny bitter gourd. this method is reliable,rapid and inexpensive and can be usedto screen a large number of accessions in spiny bitter gourd breeding programs. © 2017,pakistan botanical society. all rights reserved.