ABSTRACT
Typical commercial fruit processing currently involves predrying treatments aimed at either quality improvement of the final product or improved drying kinetics (Lewicki, 1998). The most popular pretreatments are blanching and sugar or salt osmotic dehydration. Blanching prior to drying is sometimes performed to inactivate enzymes that adversely affect product quality, denature cell membranes to reduce drying times, remove intercellular air, and/or reduce microbial load. Osmotic pretreatment results in substantial dewatering; it has also been reported to prevent excessive shrinkage of the tissue undergoing drying and to improve rehydration of dry material.
