Influence of pretreatment on the drying process of apricots

ABSTRACT Drying has been used for the preservation of fruits since ancient times. Dried apricot reduces the damages, weight and volume losses, packaging space, storage and handling costs. In this paper, the effects of hot air dryer on an Iranian apricot cultivar ”Noori” have been investigated. The experiment was conducted at three temperatures (30, 40 and 50oC), three fruit thicknesses (5, 10 and 15 mm) and two pretreatments (sulphur dioxide and water soluble sodium metabisulphite (Na2S2O5)). Based on the analysis of variance, the effects of temperature, thickness, pretreatment and their interactions on drying time were significant (P lt;1%). It was revealed that water soluble  reduced drying time more than sulphur dioxide. The data was fitted to eight different mathematical models. Page model was determined as the best one to explain thin layer drying of apricots by comparing the coefficient of correlation determination(R), chisquare ( ) and root mean square error (RMSE) between the observed and expected moisture ratios.