Impact of the coupling of osmotic dehydration and drying on the nutritional quality of dried tomato

Abstract

The present work aim to evaluate the effect of the operating parameters on the ash content, the loss of total carotenoids and the loss of vitamin C of the tomato during drying processes and to model this phenomenon in order to deduce the optimal operating conditions. Predictive models have been proposed to relate quality attributes of the finished product to different operating variables of osmotic dehydration combined with drying. The optimal working condition of the osmotic dehydration / drying combination applied to tomatoes is therefore the use of a sodium chloride concentration of 100 g/l, a temperature of the osmotic solution of 30 ° C, a duration of the osmotic dehydration 60 minutes and a drying temperature of 60 ° C to obtain a final product with the lowest ascorbic acid loss of 2.29%, a minimum total carotenoid loss content of 15.17% and a minimum content of 0.84% ash.