Recent developments in high-quality drying of vegetables, fruits, and aquatic products

ABSTRACT

Fresh foods like vegetables, fruits, and aquatic products have high water activity and they are highly heat-sensitive and easily degradable. Dehydration is one of the most common methods used to improve food shelf-life. However, drying methods used for food dehydration must not only be efficient and economic but also yield high-quality products based on flavor, nutrients, color, rehydration, uniformity, appearance, and texture. This paper reviews some new drying technologies developed for dehydration of vegetables, fruits, and aquatic products. These include: infrared drying, microwave drying, radio frequency drying, electrohydrodynamic drying, etc., as well as hybrid drying methods combining two or more different drying techniques. A comprehensive review of recent developments in high-quality drying of vegetables, fruits and aquatic products is presented and recommendations are made for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Hybrid drying
• high-quality
• new developments
• vegetables
• fruits
• aquatic products

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Baoguo Xu, Ms. Yi Lu, Ms. Liping Wang, Ms. Hongcai Wang for their assistance in literature collection during the preparation of the same topic by Prof. Min Zhang as an invited speaker in the 14th Chinese Drying Conference, Changzhou, China, Oct 11th to 14th, 2013.

Funding

We acknowledge the financial support by China 863 HI-TECH Program (No. 2011AA100802), Jiangsu Province (China) Key Project in Agriculture(Contract No. BE2016362), Jiangsu Province (China) Collaborative Innovation Center for Food Safety and Quality Control Industry Development Program, Jiangsu Province (China) Infrastructure Project (Contract No. BM2014051) which have enabled us to carry out this study.