The data on physical and mechanical properties of short and long-duration cassava cultivars are limited to design an efficient continuous type peeling machine for smallscale processing. Short duration cultivars included Sree Jaya, Sree Vijaya, and Sree Swarna, as well as long duration cultivars included M-4, Sree Athulya, Sree Suvarna, H-226, Sree Raksha, Sree Pavithra, and Sree Vishakam, were investigated. The moisture content, girth, proximal diameter, middle diameter, cylindricity, and tuber surface taper angle were the highest for long-duration cultivar H-226. The maximum length was observed in the short-duration cultivar Sree Swarna. The periderm thickness was the highest for Sree Suvarna, whereas the highest proximal cortex thickness, middle cortex thickness, and distal cortex thickness were observed in Sree Athulya, Sree Vijaya, and M-4 cultivar, respectively. The highest bulk density, true density, and porosity were observed in the long-duration cultivars; Sree Raksha, Sree Athulya, and Sree Suvarna, respectively. The highest hardness, shear force, and rupture force were recorded for cassava peelings in the cultivar Sree Athulya. Similarly for cassava flesh, the highest hardness, shear force, and rupture forces were recorded in the Sree Suvarna cultivar. A strong positive correlation for true density with bulk density and proximal diameter and moisture content with cylindricity and middle-end diameter was found from the multivariate correlation analysis. Statistical analysis showed that the reported physical and mechanical properties of the cultivars were highly significant (p <.01). Practical ApplicationsEngineering properties such as physical and mechanical properties are important for designing machines, storage structures, and processes. Cassava tuber peeling by the manual method is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and has a low capacity. Thus, the

Vacuum frying technology has proven to be one of the best methods to produce snack products with higher retention of health-promoting/protecting nutraceuticals with reduced-fat content. In this work, application and optimization of vacuum frying process for purple sweet potato have used response surface methodology-based Box-Behnken design to produce low-fat and anthocyaninrich purple sweet potato vacuum fried chips. The study showed the significant impact of frying temperature, vacuum pressure, and frying time on the chip's moisture and oil content, level of anthocyanin, visual impressions like color and texture. The selection of optimized frying parameters was carried out using a numerical optimizer and found to be 105 • C for 7.08 min at a reduced pressure of 14.79 kPa. Compared to the atmospheric deep-fried chips, the vacuum fried chips showed 86% retention of anthocyanin content and a 35.6% decline in oil content with a lower breaking force of 0.69 N. Overall, the study confirmed that vacuum fried purple sweet potato chips could be a viable option to produce snacks with high functional value to meet the current consumer demands. K E Y W O R D Santhocyanin, low fat chips, purple sweet potato, response surface methodology, vacuum fried chips Practical Application: Purple sweet potatoes have the potential to produce healthy snack chips with lower fat content and higher functional characteristics when vacuum frying technology is used with optimized processing variables.