Influence of osmotic dehydration pre-treatment and combined drying method on physico-chemical and sensory properties of pomegranate arils, cultivar Mollar de Elche

•Osmotic dehydration improved dried “Mollar de Elche” pomegranate arils.•In dried arils, the predominant anthocyanin was cyanidin-3,5-O-diglucoside.•The mixture Wonderful + chokeberry juices was the best option for the osmotic step.•Osmotic dehydration increased the content of bioactive compounds in dried arils.

“Mollar de Elche” is the most popular Spanish pomegranate cultivar (intense sweetness and easy-to-chew arils); however, arils have pale pink colour and flat sensory profile. “Mollar the Elche” arils first underwent an osmotic dehydration pre-treatment (OD) with concentrated juices: (i) chokeberry, (ii) apple, and/or (iii) pomegranate cultivar “Wonderful”, to improve their antioxidant capacity, colour, and sensory profile complexity, and later the arils were dried by a combined method (convective pre-drying + vacuum microwave finish drying). The use of OD provided dried arils with characteristic sweetness, and improved colour and aromatic complexity. The recommended OD methods were those using (i) pomegranate, and (ii) pomegranate with chokeberry juices; they improved the total anthocyanin content (mean of 368 mg kg−1), red colour (a∗ coordinate 15.6), and antioxidant capacity (e.g. ABTS mean of 5.7 mmol Trolox 100 g−1). However, further research is still needed because freeze-dried arils had the highest anthocyanin content.