The impact of freeze-drying on strawberry quality

Abstract

This work analyses and models the dehydration kinetics for whole and sliced strawberries during freeze-drying. A Virtis 35L Gardiner lyophyliser was used. Freeze-drying was carried out at various hotplate temperatures and several product thicknesses. It was observed that increasing hotplate temperature from 30°C to 70°C during the course of freeze-drying led to reducing the process from 48h to 36h for whole strawberries and from 12h to 8h for the slices, stable dry products being obtained. Studying several strawberry freeze-drying parameters showed that temperature has an important effect on reducing the process’ duration. It lowers the process’ cost whilst preserving dry fruit quality, thereby opening up the field by applying this technology to treating new food products.