Effect of ultrasound-assisted osmotic dehydration pretreatment on the convective drying of strawberry

The work was planned to produce dietetic dehydrated strawberries with application of ultrasound osmotic dehydration (UOD) as pretreatment. A Box-Behnken design (BBD) were employed to characterize the UOD strawberry process, optimize and investigate the effect of independent variables like ultrasound time (10, 20 and 30 min), concentration of osmotic solution (distilled water, 32.5 and 65 °Brix) and temperature (20, 30 and 40 °C) on the water loss (WL), solid gain (SG) and weight reduction (WR). The same BBD were used to estimate the main effects of OD without ultrasound treatment. A multi-criteria optimization based on maximal possible values of WL and WR and minimal value of SG was achieved. This was 20.5 min of ultrasound time, 47.5 °Brix osmotic solution concentration and 31 °C medium temperature. The effects of UOD carried out under the optimized operating conditions on kinetics of convective air drying of strawberry at 40, 50 and 60 °C, and velocity of 1 m/s, using the phenomenological model of Coupled Washing/Diffusion (CWD). Starting accessibility, moisture effective diffusivity Deff value and activation energy (Ea) were calculated from similar-Fick's law and analogous Arrhenius equation, respectively with and without shrinkage correction. Color difference, Chroma and hue angle of fresh and UOD-air dried strawberries were evaluated. Quality attributes were estimated through the assessment of the phenolic content, antioxidant activity, rehydration capacity, and X-ray powder diffraction characteristics.