Keywords: Tomato Peels Carotenoids Genotype Crop year Introduction. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of genotype and crop year on the quantity of waste peels from six Bulgarian tomato cultivars generated during their peeling and the carotenoids content of the obtained peels. Materials and methods. Six Bulgarian tomato cultivars, were grown under open-field conditions at the Maritsa Vegetable Crop Research Institute, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The combined effect of the investigated

more »

... rs on the quantity of the waste generated during tomato peeling was established by the two-factor dispersion analysis and by the HPLC analysis the carotenoids contained in tomato peels were determined. Results and discussion. It was found that tomato genotype has a major effect on the percentage of generated peels during tomato peeling and on its carotenoids content. The average persentage of peels from tomatoes harvested in 2013 year ranged from 2.450.13% to 5.330.09%. The highest persentage of peels was found for "Carobeta" cultivar and at least for "Topaz". For tomato cultivars cultivated in 2014 crop year the average persentage of the obtained peels varied from 2.980.13% to 3.500.25% and the highest quantity of peels was generated from the "Aquarius F1" cultivar and at least from "Carobeta" cultivar of tomato. The obtained peels contained mainly lycopene, betacarotene and lutein. In the first crop year the highest contents of lycopene (97.16±0.81 mg/100g) and lutein (21.22±0.10 mg/100g) were found in the peels of the "Stella" cultivar of tomato and those of "Carobeta" cultivar had the highest content of betacarotene (108.48±1.36 mg/100g), whereas in the second year of survey most of the lycopene (241.14±1.24 mg/100g) was contained in the "Aquarius F1" peels, and the beta-carotene (293.36±2.00 mg/100g) and lutein (13.58±0.15 mg/100g) in the "Stella" tomato peels. Tomato peels of cultivars "Stella", "Topaz", "Aquarius F 1 " and "Jacqueline" are reached in lycopene and betacarotene, whereas the peels of cultivars "Marigold" and "Carobeta" are suitable source of beta-carotene only. The results indicated the greatest influence of the tomato genotype on lutein content (69.43%), followed by beta-carotene (57.52%) and peels persentage (46.55%). The environmental conditions were found to had a strong influence on the content of peels (41.66%) and lycopene (38.73%), while the effect on beta-carotene was lower (14.92%) and on luteine was very low (1.63%). Conclusions. The amount of lycopene in tomato peels is dependent on genotype and crop year, whereas the beta-carotene and lutein contents were affected mainly by the tomato genotype.