The present invention is related to a process for the preparation of tomato whole extracts with lycopene content from 5% to 20% and with reducing sugars content expressed as glucose lower than 1%, comprising the following steps: (a) pretreating fresh tomatoes, which comprises washing, then cutting or crushing (b) heat concentrating of the cut or crushed tomato from step a) at a temperature ranging from 40°C to 70°C (c) extracting the concentrate from step b) for at least one hour with water-saturated ethyl acetate in a volume ranging from 1.0 to 2.5 times the weight of the concentrate (d) backwashing the extract from step c) with water (e) concentrating the extract to dryness under reduced pressure in the range of 20 mBar to a final volume ranging from 0.10 to 0.28% with respect to the starting volume (f) filtering and drying the lycopene precipitated from the concentrate and optionally suspending lycopene in ethanol or ethyl acetate, then filtering and washing with ethyl acetate until obtaining the desired purity (g) adding seed oil such as herein described to lycopene as obtained by step f).
