| Dried apple (Malus domestica B.) shows a growing trend to its worldwide consumption as raw material used to produce organic snacks, integral breakfast foods, chips, etc. Apple is often dried by conventional methods (e.g. hot-air drying, freeze-drying, etc.), which are usually uncontrolled and then prone to product quality deterioration. Thus, to allow the production of high-value end products, there is a need for developing new drying systems. In this study, it was investigated the feasibility of an implementation of NIR spectroscopy in smart drying systems to non-destructively detect and monitor physicochemical changes in organic apples wedges during 8-h hot-air drying at 60 °C. Moreover, the impact of microwave heating pre-treatment (at 850 W for 45 s)... |
