Obtaining of natural tomato aroma from post-harvest vegetative parts of the tomato plant

Numerous studies have been conducted on the recovery of product processing waste in the food industry. The literature contains numerous studies on the recovery of lycopene from tomato processing waste. However, these studies focus on the utilisation of the remaining parts after tomato processing, with most of these studies mostly encompassing the production of animal feed and fertiliser. There is also research on the extraction of lycopene from tomato waste. Unlike previous studies, this one will make a difference in terms of environmental recovery by utilising not only the fruit waste but also the vegetative parts of the widely produced tomato. Studies to date have identified aroma components in tomatoes and their vegetative parts. However, no studies have been found regarding the isolation of volatile aroma components in vegetative parts using fractional distillation at different absolute pressures. This study aims to obtain natural tomato aroma from the plant waste that is produced during the process of growing tomatoes. The characteristic tomato aroma is also present in the plant's vegetative parts (leaves, stems, and stalks). However, these components are present in an azeotropic mixture with concentrated herbaceous volatile components in the vegetative parts. It is not possible to separate them using a simple method like steam distillation. For this reason, the fractions constituting the tomato aroma were obtained from the volatile mixture by rectification, a process effective in separating azeotropic mixtures. The study's results showed that it is possible to obtain volatile aroma components in pure form from the vegetative parts of the tomato. By determining the conditions under which herbaceous aromas are concentrated, the conditions enabling the separation of the compounds responsible for the characteristic tomato aroma were identified. Hexanal, hexanol, and phenethyl alcohol were found to be the three compounds present in the highest concentrations in the plant, respectively. The presence of all 25 volatile compounds, including these three, was found to be more concentrated in the plant's leaves than in the fruit itself.