In recent years, many innovative methods have been investigated to provide alternative approaches to the food drying industry, but currently the most widely used method is convective drying. There are difficulties in integrating innovative methods into the food industry due to cost, inapplicability to every food material, or product quality, etc. In addition, it is possible to improve the convective drying method by pre-treating of foods. Thanks to the convective drying method with increased efficiency, shorter drying processes can be achieved. This study investigates the effects of ethanol and citric acid pretreatments on the convective drying process of apple slices and the drying rate, diameter and thickness shrinkage, color properties, total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant activity (AA), ATR-FTIR spectra, and principal component analysis (PCA) of the dried samples. The results indicate that both ethanol and citric acid pretreatments significantly enhance the drying rate and decrease drying time, with the most favorable outcomes observed for apple slices immersed in an ethanol solution for 20 min. The study employs thin-layer and artificial neural network (ANN) modeling, revealing that ANN modeling outperforms thin-layer models in predicting moisture ratio. Shrinkage ratios in diameter and thickness were observed, but no significant statistical differences are found among the sample groups. The color properties of dried apple slices are influenced by pretreatments. L* values decreased in the ethanol-pretreated samples, whereas a* and b* values increased in all samples. On the other hand, drying process leads to a decrease in TPC and AA. Ethanol pretreatments caused higher losses; lower losses were observed in the citric acid–pretreated and untreated apples slices. ATR-FTIR analysis suggests distinct spectral changes in dried samples, particularly influenced by ethanol and citric acid pretreatments. The ATR-FTIR spectra highlighted shifts in water and carbohydrate levels, proteins, fibers, organic acids, and the occurrence of Maillard reactions throughout the drying process. PCA reveals that samples dried with ethanol and citric acid share a similar plane, while fresh samples and those dried at 60 °C exhibit different arrangements.
