“…The rehydration properties, thermal‐induced degradation and active compound loss of solar‐salted sea cucumbers is significantly affected by a series of complex treatments (Tamarit‐Pino et al ., 2020; He et al ., 2021). Therefore, low‐temperature and high‐efficiency drying methods, such as hot‐air drying, hot‐pump drying, vacuum oven‐drying, far‐infrared radiation drying, microwave drying and freeze‐drying, have been used to shorten the processing time and improve product quality (Duan et al ., 2010, 2007; Moon et al ., 2014; Ridhowati et al ., 2018; Shamsuddeen et al ., 2021). Several drying treatments have been combined, including microwave vacuum drying (MVD) (He et al ., 2021), vacuum freeze‐drying (Bai & Luan, 2018) and hybrid heat pump vacuum drying (Shamsuddeen et al ., 2021).…”