Protocol for the Solid-State Fermentation-Assisted Extraction (SSFAE) of Bioactives from Tomato Waste: The Case of Carotenoids

Tomato agro-industry generates significant amounts of waste along the production chain. This residue is a good source of nutrients and bioactive compounds. The tomato waste is a carotenoid-rich biomass, mainly lycopene which is recognized for its powerful biological activity with relevance in the pharma, food, and cosmetic industry; for this reason, several extraction technologies have been evaluated to separate these biomolecules; one of them is the solid-state fermentation-assisted extraction (SSFAE). In this chapter, we describe a protocol that has been developed to recover carotenoids, mainly lycopene, from tomato waste using SSFAE. Specifically, we used the tomato waste as solid support for the fermentation, employing a fungal strain as source of the enzymatic and metabolic machinery to separate the target molecule from the tomato biomass. Our goal is to provide the reader with guidelines on how to apply the SSFAE of bioactives from tomato waste.