Effect of tray load on drying kinetics of mango, guava and aonla

A study was conducted to find out the optimum tray load and drier type for the drying of osmosed mango, guava slices and aonla segments. The osmosed slices and segments were dehydrated in a cabinet drier, low temperature drier and vacuum drier with the tray loads of 0.30, 0.35, 0.40 and 0.45 g/cm. On the basis of, correlation and regression analyses performed by using dehydration time (h), drier and tray load as independent variables and moisture content as dependent variable, vacuum drier was found to be better in faster drying followed by cabinet drier. Tray load of 0.40 g/cm was optimum quantity in drying of better quality osmo-dehydrated products by both vacuum and cabinet drier. R value revealed that the model based on different tray loads and drier found to be appropriate to predict the drying under various drying conditions.