J. A. Carcel Universitat Politecnica de Valencia

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Quality assessment of dried eggplant using different drying methods: hot air drying, vacuum freeze drying and atmospheric freeze drying.


Conference Paper • May 2011


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J. A. Carcel
Universitat Politecnica de Valencia


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Quality assessment of dried eggplant using different drying methods: hot air drying,
vacuum freeze drying and atmospheric freeze drying.
J. V. Santacatalina, C. Ozuna, J. A. Carcel, J. V. Garcia-Pcrez* and A. Mulet
Grupo de Analisis y Simulation de Procesos Agroalimentarios (ASPA), Departamento de Tecnologi.a de
Alimentos, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, C'ami de Vera s/n, E46022, Valencia, Spain
([e-mail]).
ABSTRACT
Dehydration constitutes a traditional preservation method for fruits and vegetables and it represents a very important operation in food processing. The way how water is removed from food affects the final product quality, thus the characteristics of dried products are dependent on the drying technique used.
The main objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of different drying techniques on the quality of dried eggplant.
For this purpose, cubic samples (10 mm side) were obtained from the flesh of Spanish origin eggplants (Solanum melongena var. Black Enorma). Three different drying techniques were applied: hot air drying (HAD, 50 °C and 2 m/s), atmospheric freeze drying (AFD, -14 °C and 2 m/s) and vacuum freeze drying (VFD). The drying kinetics of HAD and AFD were determined by weighing the samples at preset times during the process. To evaluate the influence of drying method on the final quality of the product, rehydration kinetics of HAD, AFD and VFD samples were monitored. Moreover, textural profile analyses (TPA) were carried out to characterize the hardness of the rehydrated samples. A diffusion model was used to mathematically describe drying and rehydration kinetics.
Drying method influenced significantly (p<0.05) in both rehydration behaviour and textural properties. AFD samples showed intermediate properties between VFD and HAD samples. AFD samples showed a faster and higher rehydration capacity than HAD and a hardness slightly higher than VFD samples. Therefore, AFD could represent an interesting alternative to HAD and VFD to achieve high quality dried products at lower cost than VFD. Its application at industrial scale needs a thorough study on the influence of different variables in both, the kinetics of drying process and the final quality of the product.
Keywords: dehydration; rehydration; diffusion; hardness.