Phase resolved method using the Hill-Climbing Metaheuristic Algorithm applied for the spectral separation from photoacoustic spectra of chilli pepper skin and yellow corn pericarp

•Phase-resolved method is optimized using Hill Climbing Metaheuristic Algorithm.•Photoacoustic spectra of chilli fruit skin and yellow corn grain pericarp were analyzed.•Spectral contributions due to cuticle-epidermis and subcuticular layers were separated. The phase-resolved method has been widely used in photoacoustic spectroscopy for separating the contribution of different optical absorption centers to a spectrum. However, the procedure is lengthy, tedious and without precision control, because one has to calculate several spectra to search for the phase angle at which only one contribution is present every time. In this work, this limitation is avoided by the implementation of a method as a search and optimization problem using the Hill Climbing Metaheuristic Algorithm. As test examples, the photoacoustic spectra of chilli fruit skin of Anaheim type (Capsicum Annuum L.) and yellow corn grain pericarp of dent type (Zea Mays L.) were analyzed in the wavelength ranges where there is optical absorption of the photoprotective pigments of these samples.