New Frontiers in Food Drying Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

Fresh foods such as vegetables and fruits have high moisture contents and they lose, in a short, time their physical, chemical and nutritional properties. Drying techniques are able to slow down food deterioration while maintaining quality. Drying is one of the most common and cost-effective techniques for extending the shelf life of food plant materials and can be used for other foods, such as milk, gels, etc. used in food processing.

Drying considerably decreases the water activity of the foodstuff, reduces microbiological and enzymatic activity, and minimises physical and chemical reactions during its storage. Dried foods offer numerous benefits, including storage stability, lowering packaging requirements, and reducing the volume for transportation.

In the last few years, the increase of the consumption of dried products has resulted in a deep scientific and technological interest on the production processes.

Therefore, a suitable scheme for drying food materials has to be determined to reduce the various adverse changes and to establish a good understanding of changes during drying and the underlying mechanisms. In addition, product quality, drying efficiency, and drying time are additional factors of interest to consider in the selection of the drying system.

In recent years, new drying systems with or without pretreatment before drying have been developed to improve food quality, decreasing the drying time and energy consumption.

This Special Issue presents the latest available techniques in the field of drying of agricultural food products such as new methods, new products, and modelling, and their benefits in food processing operations are also discussed.

Dr. Giuseppina Adiletta
Dr. Wijitha Senadeera
Guest Editors

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• Food drying
• New drying technology
• Innovative drying pretreatment
• Quality preservation
• Diffusion of water