Received: 1 July 2021 Revised: 2 September 2021 Accepted: 13 October 2021

DOI: 10.1111/1750-3841.15961

F O O D E N G I N E E R I N G , M AT E R I A L S S C I E N C E , & N A N O T E C H N O L O G Y

Preparation and physicochemical stability of tomato seed oil

microemulsions

Qiufeng Song1,2,3 Weiliang Guan2,3 Wenyu Liu1 Lingzhen Liu4

Changqing Wei1 Luyun Cai2,3,5

1School of Food Science and

Technology/Key Laboratory of Xinjiang
Phytomedicine Resource and Utilization
of Ministry of Education, Shihezi
University, Shihezi, China
2 School of Biological and Chemical
Engineering, NingboTech University,
Ningbo, China
3Ningbo Research Institute, Zhejiang
University, Ningbo, China
4 Xinjiang Baihejing Biotechnology Co.,
Ltd., Bazhou, China
5 College of Biosystems Engineering and
Food Science, Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou, China
Correspondence
Changqing Wei and Luyun Cai, School
of Food Science and Technology/Key
Laboratory of Xinjiang Phytomedicine
Resource and Utilization of Ministry of
Education, Shihezi University, Shihezi,
832000, China.
Email: changqing_wei@126.com and
cailuyun@zju.edu.cn
Abstract: In this study, microemulsions were fabricated using tomato seed oil,
water, Tween 80 and citric acid, and then the physicochemical characteristics
and the influence of environmental stress were investigated. The physicochem-
ical properties of the microemulsions were evaluated by transmission electron
microscopy (TEM), mean particle diameter, polydispersity index (PDI) and con-
ductivity. The phase diagrams of tomato seed oil/Tween 80/citric acid/water
microemulsions were constructed under different pHs and ionic strengths. Stor-
age stability of the systems was investigated at 4, 37 and 65◦ C, and changes in
turbidity and lipid oxidation products were monitored. Nano-size zeta potential
analyzer results demonstrated that the mean particle diameter and polydisper-
sity index of tomato seed oil microemulsions were 14 nm and 0.014. The transi-
tion from W/O to O/W could be detected from electrical conductivity and vis-
cosity data with the increasing of water content. The results showed that the
microemulsion areas decreased with increasing pH and NaCl concentrations.
What is more, the study proved that tomato seed oil microemulsions exhibited a
good storage stability.
KEYWORDS
microemulsion, physicochemical properties, stability, tomato seed oil

Weiliang Guan is the first co-author. Practical Application: In this study, the preparation of tomato seed oil
Qiufeng Song and Weiliang Guan con- microemulsion can not only make full use of the nutritional value of tomato seed
tributed equally to this study.
oil, but also ensure the effective protection of the nutrients contained in it, and
Funding information improve the problem of adding difficult. By using microemulsion as delivery car-
Science and Technology Research Project rier of tomato seed oil, the application of tomato seed oil in food, cosmetics and
in High-tech Field of Xinjiang Science
and Technology Bureau, Grant/Award
other fields could be enhanced. Therefore, the preparation of tomato seed oil
Numbers: 2019AB018, 2018AB014; microemulsion provides a theoretical basis for production practice.
National Key R&D Program of China
“Science and Technology Strengthen
Economy 2020”, Grant/Award Number:
SQ2020YFF0414425

J. Food Sci. 2021;86:5385–5396. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jfds © 2021 Institute of Food Technologists

R 5385
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1 INTRODUCTION
Tomato is an annual herb of Solanaceae, which is not only
a vegetable but also a fruit. Xinjiang is the most impor-
tant tomato production and processing area in China, with
the production and marketing volume accounting for more
than 90% of the country. A high amount of waste is pro-
duced in the process of tomato deep processing, 60% of
which is tomato seeds (Del Valle et al., 2006; Ruiz Celma
et al., 2009). Studies have shown that tomato seeds contain
about 20.0%–36.9% of oil (on a dry basis) with high nutri-
tional quality, which is an important reservoir of biologi-
cally active phenolic substances (Chandra & Ramalingam,
2011; Durante et al., 2017; Gumus et al., 2020; Shao et al.,
2015). Hence, tomato seeds can be used for the extraction
of vegetable oils, which can not only improve the economic
benefits of enterprises but also provide people with health-
benefit oil.
It has been reported that tomato seed oil from Xin-
jiang contains 58.59% linoleic acid, 26.31% oleic acid,
8.39% palmitic acid and 5.02% stearic acid. The content
of unsaturated fatty acid is 85.20%, which is higher than
that of other areas in China. In addition, tomato seed
oil contains considerable amounts of tocopherol, phy-
tosterol carotene, lycopene and other nutrients. Tomato
seed oil has been shown to have higher antioxidant activ-
ity than some commercial edible oils, such as soybean
oil and olive oil (Shao et al., 2012). Meanwhile, it is a
high-quality edible vegetable oil, which exhibits biologi-
cal activity and has the physiological functions of delay-
ing aging, preventing arteriosclerosis, improving blood
circulation and regulating body immunity (Shao et al.,
2015).
However, tomato seed oil may be subject to a wide
variety of environmental stress during processing, stor-
age, transport and consumption (i.e., changes in pH, ionic
strength and temperature). Moreover, these highly unsat-
urated fatty acids are extremely susceptible to oxidation,
resulting in potential alterations in nutritional composi-
tion as well as in the sensory quality of the product. In
addition, the insolubility and low bioavailability of oil in
aqueous solution limit their application in many aspects.
Therefore, one challenge is to develop effective strategies
to maintain its stability during processing, storage and
transportation and to promote their application in the food
industry.
Microemulsions are homogeneous, clear and ther-
modynamically stable dispersions, which usually have
advantages of thermodynamic stability, spontaneous for-
mation, easy scale up, large interfacial area, nano-size
droplets, isotropy and low viscosity (Abbasi & Radi, 2016).
Microemulsions are usually self-assembled spontaneously
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS
in the presence of appropriate proportions of oil, water and
surfactant components and are easy to be prepared under
soft mechanical mixing conditions (Garti et al., 2001). They
have optical homogeneity and transparency, and the parti-
cle size is usually in the range of 5–100 nm (Boonme, 2007;
Das et al., 2020; Heuschkel et al., 2008). Making use of the
advantage of microemulsion to solve the problem of solu-
bility in food processing and the stability of nutrients and
food additives in liquid solution has attracted more and
more attention (Lin et al., 2009). Thus, microemulsions
have found wide applications in the food, agrochemicals,
cosmetic, pharmaceutical industries and digestion models
(Boonme, 2007; Chatzidaki et al., 2015; Kyriazi et al., 2013;
Pratap & Bhowmick, 2010).
In a previous study, microemulsion prepared by fish oil
was highly stable with no significant difference in droplet
size (<15 nm) or distribution under environmental stresses
such as pH, ionic strength and centrifugation (Mori Cortes
et al., 2019). Moreover, Bergonzi et al. (2014) found that the
formulation of curcumin O/W microemulsion improved
the oral bioavailability, solubilization capacity and phys-
ical stability during storage. Quite interestingly, Xu et al.
(2016) developed a cosurfactant-free microemulsion for
microalgal oil, which exhibited excellent heat and salt tol-
erance and good feasibility for industrialization. Therefore,
it is quite necessary and meaningful to improve the stabil-
ity of edible oil by formulating microemulsion. Neverthe-
less, few reports about the formulation of tomato seed oil
microemulsions systems to enhance its stability have been
published.
Thus, the objective of this study is to prepare and
characterize a food-grade O/W microemulsion, and the
capability of microemulsion with tomato seed oil was
evaluated. In addition, the influence of environmental
stress on the formation and oxidative stability of the
microemulsion system was investigated. The results of
this study can provide reference for further exploration
of the application and development of tomato seed oil
in the food industry and the skin care industry in the
future.
2 MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 Materials
Tomato seed oil was provided by Xinjiang Baihejing
Biological Technology Co., Ltd. (China) and used with-
out additional purification. NaCl, NaOH, HCl (analytical
grade), Tween 80 and citric acid (purity 99.8%, food grade)
were purchased from Zhengzhou Wanbo Chemical Prod-
ucts Co., Ltd. (China)
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS
2.2 Preparation of microemulsions and
construction of pseudoternary phase
diagram
In order to construct pseudoternary, the surfactant (Tween
80) and cosurfactant (citric acid) (10:1, w/w) were mixed
using a magnetic stirrer at room temperature. The sur-
factant/cosurfactant mixture was mixed with the oil at
nine different ratios (1:9, 2:8, 3:7, 4:6, 5:5, 6:4, 7:3, 8:2 and
9:1, w/w) in glass beakers. After stirring gently for 30 min,
double steamed water was added drop by drop to the oil
and surfactant mixture until the system changed from tur-
bid to transparent. The quality of water determined the
boundaries of the microemulsion region. Then, the pseu-
doternary diagrams were constructed by using the Origin
2018 software (OriginLab, Northampton, MA, USA).
2.3 Characterization of the
microemulsions
2.3.1 Droplet size distribution and
morphological evaluation
The mean particle diameter and polydispersity index
of tomato seed oil microemulsions were measured by
Nano particle size and potential analyzer (Nanoplus-
3; Micromeritics, China). Before analysis, the samples
were diluted with deionized water to the instrument
sensitivity range. All measurements were carried out in
triplicate.
The morphological valuation of tomato seed oil
microemulsions was observed using a transmission elec-
tron microscope (HT7700; Hitachi, Japan). Samples were
prepared by spreading a drop of microemulsion solution
on a 200-mesh copper grid coated with a film, then
dyeing it with a drop of phosphotungstic acid solution
(2%wt, pH 6.7–6.8) and excessing droplet was removed.
Finally, the grid was dried at room temperature before
observation.
2.3.2 Electrical conductivity
Electrical conductivity was determined by a conductivity
meter. The electrode was immersed in the microemulsion
sample until equilibrium was reached. The temperature
was kept constant at 25◦ C.
5387
2.4 Evaluation of stability
2.4.1 Influence of pH and centrifugation
Solutions with a pH of 1, 4, 7, 10 and 13 were formulated to
replace double-distilled water to prepare microemulsions,
respectively. HCl and NaOH were selected to adjust water
phase pH, and the double-distilled water was added to the
system as a control group. The pseudoternary phase dia-
gram was used to evaluate the stability of microemulsions
at a different pH.
The evaluation of centrifugal stability was carried out
according to the methodology of Ghosh et al. (2014) with
some adaptations. The tomato seed oil microemulsion was
centrifuged at 2,000, 4,000, 6,000, 8,000 and 10,000 × g
for 30 min at 25◦ C to observe the state of the microemul-
sion, and its absorbance was measured at 550 nm. The
absorbance of the noncentrifuged microemulsion was
compared, and the transmittance was calculated according
to Equation (1):
𝑇 (%) = 𝐴0 ∕𝐴1 × 100% (1)
where T is the transmittance, A0 is the initial absorbance of
microemulsion and A1 is the absorbance of the microemul-
sion after centrifugation.
2.4.2 Influence of salt concentration
To investigate the effect of ionic strength, different concen-
trations of aqueous solution of NaCl (0, 0.2, 1, 2, 3, 4 and
5 M) were selected instead of distilled water for microemul-
sion formation.
2.4.3 Storage stability
The storage stability of the microemulsions was investi-
gated at different temperatures to determine their long-
term physicochemical stability. The tomato seed oil
microemulsions were stored at 4, 37 and 65°C to determine
their oxidative stability during a 20-day storage period.
The samples were used for determining turbidity and pri-
mary (conjugated dienes hydroperoxides) and secondary
(thiobarbituric acid reactive substances) oxidation prod-
ucts every 2 days, respectively.
Conjugated dienes (CD) were determined in triplicate
according to the method described previously with some
5388 TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS

modifications (Li et al., 2020). Samples (0.3 ml) were

mixed with 1.5 ml of isooctane/2-propanl (3:1, v/v) and
then vortexed for 1 min. The organic solvent phase was
separated by centrifugation of the sample for 5 min at
1000 × g. Then, 0.2 ml of the organic solvent phase was
collected and mixed with 2.8 ml methanol/1-butanol (2:1,
v/v). The above reaction mixture was 10 times diluted
by distilled water, and absorbance of each sample was
then measured at OD (Optical density) 234 nm using a
TU-1810 Visible spectrophotometer (Beijng Persee general
instrument Co., Ltd., China). The results were expressed
in terms of mmol hydroperoxides (HP) equivalent per kg
of oil (mmol eq HP/kg oil), using 26,000 M−1 cm−1 as
the molar extinction coefficient of conjugated dienes at
234 nm.
Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) value
was determined using a method described previously
(Mori Cortes et al., 2019). In brief, microemulsion sam-
ples (2 g) were homogenized with 16 ml of trichloroacetic
acid (TCA) 10% (w/v) solution for 30 min in an ice-
water bath. The extract was filtrated, and then 2 ml of
filtrate was mixed with 2 ml of 0.5% (w/v) TBA solu-
tion in a sealed tube. These tubes were then heated in
water bath at 70◦ C for 30 min. The absorbance was mea-
sured at 532 nm by a TU-1810 Visible spectrophotometer.
A standard graph was prepared with known concentra-
tions of 1,1,3,3-tetraethoxypropane (TEP) for calculating
the TBARS values.
Turbidity was evaluated according to the method
described in the literature (Mori Cortes et al., 2018). The F I G U R E 1 (a) Ternary phase diagram of tomato seed
absorbance of samples stored at different temperatures for oil/surfactant and cosurfactant/water at 25°C. (b) Transmission
20 days was measured by a TU-1810 Visible spectropho- electron microscopy (TEM) images of microemulsion sample
tometer at 500 nm every 2 days. The results were expressed (surfactant to oil ratio was 9 to 1). (c) Droplet size distribution and
according to Equation (2): polydispersity index (PDI) of microemulsion formulated with
Tween 80, citric acid and tomato seed oil using mass ratio 9:1 for
( ) 2.303𝑎𝑏𝑠(𝑡) (Tween80+citric acid):tomato seed oil
Δ𝑇 𝑐𝑚−1 = 𝑇 (𝑡) − 𝑇 (0) = − 𝑇0 (2)
𝑙

where ΔT was turbidity variation, T(t) is the turbidity at

time “t”, T(0) the initial turbidity, abs is the measured 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
absorbance and l the optical path of the cell (Cho et al.,
2008). 3.1 The pseudoternary phase diagrams

The formation of microemulsion was primarily deter-

2.5 Statistical analysis
All experiments were performed in triplicate, and the
results were expressed as the mean ± SD. Analyses of vari-
ance were conducted separately on the dependent vari-
ables analyzed. AutoCAD 2014 software was used to cal-
culate the microemulsion area.
mined by visual observations and transparency. As shown
in Figure 1a, the ternary phase diagram of a four-
component system of Tween 80, citric acid, tomato seed oil
and water was constructed, and the area of the microemul-
sion region was calculated. The main function of surfac-
tants is to reduce the interfacial tension between immis-
cible liquids, form an adsorption film on the interface
and promote the formation of microemulsions (Tiwari
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS
et al., 2018). Generally, it was difficult to obtain the larger
microemulsion area by the use of only one surfactant. In
order to obtain a large microemulsion region, cosurfactant
is often needed. The cosurfactant may be embedded into
the surfactant molecules and together with the surfactant
form an interface membrane, increasing the interface flu-
idity (El Maghraby, 2008). The curvature of the interfa-
cial membrane might also be varied by the cosurfactant
so that the oil has greater permeability between the sur-
factant tails, which may have a positive influence on the
area and stability of the microemulsion (Flanagan & Singh,
2006). Moreover, cosurfactant could enhance the solubi-
lization of microemulsion system as working with non-
ionic surfactants (Aum et al., 2021). Short-chain alcohols
are commonly used as cosurfactants in such systems (Aum
et al., 2021; Dantas et al., 2019). Nevertheless, compared
with alcohols, citric acids are biodegradable, less toxic and
widely present in natural foods (Angumeenal & Venkap-
payya, 2013). Therefore, citric acid was selected as cosurfac-
tant in this experiment. It is generally considered that the
surfactant to cosurfactant weight ratio is a key factor affect-
ing the area of microemulsion (Cheng et al., 2020). The
Tween 80 and citric acid were mixed in ratio of 10:1, and
the microemulsification experiment was carried out with
tomato seed oil and water to construct a pseudoternary
phase diagram. The results showed that this ratio was
favorable for the formation of transparent and uniformly
dispersed microemulsion regions, and the percentage of
the one phase microemulsion region was 39.10%. As men-
tioned above, when the ratio of oil phase to surfactant and
cosurfactant was 1:9, the microemulsion was completely
transparent, and a light blue opalescence appeared after
dilution with double steam water, and no phase separation
occurred during storage. Therefore, this ratio was selected
for later research.
3.2 Characterizations of tomato seed oil
microemulsions
3.2.1 Morphological valuation and droplet
size distribution and polydispersity index
Figure 1b shows the transmission electron micrograph
of the microemulsion. The microemulsion was uniformly
spherical with smooth surface and no aggregation existed.
The particle size and polydispersity index (PDI) of the
microemulsion is shown in Figure 1c. The microemulsion
showed a monomodal distribution, the droplet size was
14.0 nm, and the PDI of the system was 0.014. The bioavail-
ability of microemulsion generally increases with droplet
size reduction (Jalali-Jivan & Abbasi, 2020). Therefore, the
smaller droplet size of microemulsion was conducive to the
5389
F I G U R E 2 The variation of the microemulsion electrical
conductivity as a function of water content at 25 ± 0.1◦ C
wide application of microemulsion system in food system
and medicine.
Furthermore, the PDI was relatively lower compared to
that of Cortés et al. (<0.30), indicating that the particle size
distribution in the microemulsion system was uniform and
the system was relatively stable (Mori Cortes et al., 2018;
Tiwari et al., 2018).
3.2.2 Electrical conductivity
Conductivity demonstrates the structural transformation
of microemulsions. The structural transformation can be
investigated by measuring the change of the electrical con-
ductivity of microemulsion as the weight fraction of water
phase increases (Billman & Kaler, 1991). According to the
conductivity, the continuous phase of microemulsions can
be determined, and the structure type of microemulsions
can be determined accordingly (Wang et al., 2015). When
the microemulsion system was transformed from W/O
type to bicontinuous or O/W structure, the distribution
of hydrons in the system was significantly changed. The
low conductivity of the W/O microemulsion was due to
the separation of the dispersed droplets from the con-
tinuous oil and surfactant monolayer (Kalaitzaki et al.,
2014). This might due to the presence of a large num-
ber of nonionic Tween 80 molecules of water binding
effect, as well as a small number of free water molecules
(Yaghmur et al., 2004). Compared with the system with
continuous oil phase, the system with continuous water
phase showed better electrical conductivity. Figure 2 shows
the electrical conductivity curves at different weight ratios
of surfactant to oil phase. The change in electrical con-
ductivity presented similar behavior as the water content
5390 TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS

FIGURE 3 Influence of various pH values on one-phase areas of microemulsion system. All ratios were on w/w basis

increased, both increasing first and then decreasing. The
turning point of the trend could be seen as the critical
point of the structure transformation of the microemul-
sion. At the initial stage of the measurement, they had
a very low conductivity value. Within this region, the
conductivity was determined by the oil phase (Xu et al.,
2016), and the surfactant and oil had weak conductiv-
ity. When the water content exceeded 20%, the sharp
increase of electrical conductivity occurred, indicating that
the system structure changes at this time. Previous studies
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS
FIGURE 4 Visual appearance of tomato seed oil microemulsion after centrifugation
suggested that this phenomenon was due to percolation
transitions. The water molecules were released gradually
from the reverse micelle to obtain a constant motivity,
and their electrical conductivity was increased due to the
collision of the two phases (Casanova et al., 2016; Ma
& Zhong, 2015; Mori Cortes et al., 2018). Therefore, it
could be judged that W/O microemulsions shift to the
bicontinuous structure. In the bicontinuous structure area,
W/O and O/W coexisted (Chen et al., 2017). The tran-
sition of W/O microemulsions to O/W microemulsions
structure occurred when the water content increased. As
the water content increased further, the concentration of
microemulsions droplet was reduced by the dilution effect
of water, which led to the decrease of electrical conductiv-
ity. Several authors have reported the similar transitions
in microemulsions with Kolliphor RH40, Sunflower oil,
ethanol and water (Mori Cortes et al., 2018).
3.3 The influences of different
environmental stresses on phase stability
of tomato seed oil microemulsions
3.3.1 Influence of pH and centrifugation
As shown in Figure 3, when the pH value increased, the
system became alkaline, and the area of the microemul-
sion decreased. Our results indicated that the acidic envi-
ronment increased the stability of the microemulsion sys-
tem, which was consistent with those of Aum et al. (2021).
In their work, the stability of microemulsions prepared
with nonionic surfactants at different acid concentrations
were investigated, and the results showed that the droplet
size showed no significant change and exhibited Newto-
nian fluid behavior. When the pH approached the pKa
of citric acid (about pH 3.1, 4.7 and 5.4), the microemul-
sion area decreased significantly, and then the stability
of microemulsion decreased. This might ascribed to a
decrease in electrostatic repulsion between the droplets,
5391
T A B L E 1 Transmittance and visual appearance of tomato seed
oil microemulsion after centrifugation
Centrifuge
speed (×g) Visual appearance Transmittance (%)
2000 Clear and transparent 100
4000 Clear and transparent 96.97
6000 Clear and transparent 90.91
8000 Clear and transparent 78.85
10,000 Clear and transparent 62.73
which led to the droplets to aggregate as the attractive
colloid interaction (van der Waals) outstrips the repulsive
interaction (solid and electrostatic) (Rao & McClements,
2011). Based on the DLVO theory, the energy barrier
inhibited the approach of droplets to avoid aggregation,
while the reduction of electrostatic repulsion will lower
the height of the energy barrier until it is insufficient
to restrain droplet aggregation (Abdolmaleki et al., 2016).
However, in contrast to the stability at low pH, microemul-
sions tend to be unstable at high pH, which might be due to
physical and chemical effects (Rao & McClements, 2011).
As shown in Figure 4, no oil-water separation was
observed, and the microemulsion remained clear and
transparent after centrifugation, indicating that the system
had good centrifugal stability. Table 1 showed the com-
parison of transmittance at different centrifuge speeds.
The transmittance of microemulsion decreased with the
increase of centrifugal speed. The main reason was that the
increase of centrifugal force resulted in the aggregation of
particles inside the microemulsion and the decrease of its
stability.
3.3.2 Influence of salt concentration
Figure 5 shows the effects of NaCl concentration on the
microemulsion area. The microemulsion area increased
slightly at a low concentration of NaCl, indicating that the
5392 TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS

FIGURE 5 Effect of various concentrations of NaCl on one-phase areas of microemulsion system at room temperature. All ratios were
on w/w basis

salt concentration had a promoting effect on the forma-
tion of microemulsion, and this promoting effect gradu-
ally diminished with the increase of the salt concentra-
tion. With the increase of ionic strength, especially when
it reached 3 mol/L, the area of microemulsion decreased
significantly. This phenomenon might be attributed to the
fact that nonionic surfactants are greatly affected by ionic
strength. Low concentration of NaCl will force surfactant
molecules to separate from water phase and form reverse
micelles with more oil phase (Fanun, 2008). As a result, the
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS 5393

loaded oil phase and the area of the microemulsion region

increased. However, high concentration of NaCl caused
salting out, which reduced the hydrophilic ability of surfac-
tant and the area of microemulsion, and then microemul-
sion vanished at the concentration of 5 mol/L. This result
was probably be due to the shielding of the electrostatic
repulsion between the negatively charged nano-emulsion
droplets when the salt concentration increased, leading
to the flocculation and coalescence of the particles in the
emulsion (McClements, 2006). Overall, low concentration
of salt solution promoted the formation of microemulsion,
while high concentration of salt solution inhibited the for-
mation of microemulsion.

3.3.3 Storage stability

The substances reactive to CD and thiobarbituric acid

(TBARS) of microemulsion were measured to monitor
the primary and secondary oxidation products through-
out storage at 4, 37 and 65°C for 20 days. After 20 days
of storage, the microemulsion samples remained transpar-
ent and stable without stratification. It can be seen from
Figure 6a,b, the tomato seed oil microemulsion was of
good oxidation stability at different storage temperatures.
In our results, as the storage time increased, there was
a slight increase in the value of CD in all samples, and
the rate of lipid oxidation increased with the increasing of
storage temperature. Overall, oxidation of the tomato seed
oil microemulsions increased with the increase in storage
time throughout the 20 days storage. However, the changes
in the concentration of lipid oxidation products in the
microemulsion samples were lower than those in the pre-
vious study (Li et al., 2020). The acceptable limit of TBARS
was reported to be 7–8 µg MDA/g (Varlik et al., 1993). In our
study, the value measured was less than 0.144 µg MDA/g.
It was recommended to discard heated oils at 29 mmol/L
CD value in a previous research (Farhoosh1 & Moosavi,
2009). In addition, during the 20-day period, the maxi-
mum CD value was still less than 20 mmol/L, indicating
the lipid oxidation level of tomato seed oil microemulsion
was acceptable for application after storage. This might
be caused by the addition of cosurfactant (citric acid) to
microemulsion system, which not only had a significant
promotion effect on the solubilized water amount of the
F I G U R E 6 (a and b) The oxidative stability of
microemulsion but also acted as an antioxidant (Abdel- microemulsions: conjugated dienes (CD) and thiobarbituric acid
Salam et al., 2018; Spernath et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2009). reactive substances (TBARS). (c) Variation of turbidity as a function
These results suggested that although the concentration of storage time at 4, 37 and 65◦ C.
of oxidized products increased slightly, the microemulsion
5394
system had good oxidation stability, which is of vital impor-
tance for potential practical application.
After the samples were stored at different tempera-
tures for 20 days, visual observations were made first. All
the samples were transparent, without phase separation
after storage, and the appearance and stability of the sys-
tem did not change significantly. The storage stability of
microemulsion was determined by measuring turbidity
variation during the whole storage process. After the 20-
day storage, the turbidity of the samples stored at different
temperatures was close to zero (Figure 6c), indicating that
the samples were still in a relatively stable state.
4 CONCLUSION
In order to improve the utilization value of tomato seed
oil, the microemulsion system of tomato seed oil was con-
structed by using Tween 80 as surfactant and citric acid as
cosurfactant by pseudoternary phase diagram.
Within a range, low concentration of NaCl and the acid
conditions were beneficial to the increase of microemul-
sion area, while high concentration of NaCl was not con-
ducive to the stability of tomato seed oil microemul-
sion. The tomato seed oil microemulsion system could be
divided into W/O, bicontinuous phase and O/W by using
the electrical conductivity. Moreover, the microemulsions
exhibited good stability during the 20-day storage, with no
delamination and slight oxidation products. The results
obtained from this study could provide a good foundation
for further development and application of tomato seed oil
in functional food development.
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
This study was supported by Science and Technology
Research Project in High-tech Field of Xinjiang Science
and Technology Bureau (No. 2019AB018 and 2018AB014),
National Key R&D Program of China “Science and Tech-
nology Strengthen Economy 2020″ (SQ2020YFF0414425).
AU T H O R CO N T R I B U T I O N S
Qiufeng Song: data curation, formal analysis, investi-
gation, methodology, writing—original draft. Weiliang
Guan: formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—
review and editing. Wenyu Liu: project administration,
resources, supervision. Lingzhen Liu: resources, valida-
tion. Changqing Wei: conceptualization, funding acqui-
sition, writing—review and editing. Luyun Cai: funding
acquisition, writing—review and editing.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare no conflict of interest
TOMATO SEED OIL MICROEMULSIONS
ORCID
Luyun Cai https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3996-1565
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How to cite this article: Song, Q., Guan, W., Liu,
W., Liu, L., Wei, C., & Cai, L. Preparation and
physicochemical stability of tomato seed oil
microemulsions. J Food Sci. 2021;86:5385–5396.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.15961