Solar Drying of Tomato in the Arid Area of TOUAT (Adrar, Algeria)

Our work presents experimental results of drying, which are made in the south of Algeria Adrar exactly. View that the distance between Adrar and other cities is more than 700 km and that this city is one of the cities that have a large tomato production and marketing of this crop is very difficult, we thought of method storage of this product for the market throughout the year. In our experiments we used varieties of tomatoes that are produced in this city. These varieties have water content ranging from 68 to 75% above varies depending on the degree of ripeness. The experiments were performed with an indirect solar dryer with forced convection. The experiments show the influence of the variety of tomato on drying curves, the temperature of the drying air and the size of the cut slices.