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This study explores the use of supercritical CO₂ (Sc-CO₂) as an innovative and green approach for pretreating date fruits to enhance the total sugar yield by water-based extraction. The pretreatment step was investigated based on Box-Behnken factorial design to evaluate the influence of critical variables on the total sugar yield. Sc-CO₂ conditioning of the date pulp was investigated by varying the pressure (10–20 MPa), temperature (25–50 °C), and contact time (30–120 min) in a batch setup. Temperature and pressure variables were identified as the significant parameters for the Sc-CO₂ treatment. Optimization analysis showed a maximum total sugar yield of 74.1 g/100 g for Sc-CO₂ pretreated date pulp at 10 MPa and 46 °C for 59 min. Besides, the pretreatment mechanism involved major effects such as swelling, disruption, and explosion that favored the enhanced recovery of total sugars from the date fruit matrix …