Emerging drying techniques for food safety and quality: A review

Abstract

The new trends in drying technology seek a promising alternative to synthetic preservatives to improve the shelf‐life and storage stability of food products. On the other hand, the drying process can result in deformation and degradation of phytoconstituents due to their thermal sensitivity. The main purpose of this review is to give a general overview of common drying techniques with special attention to food industrial applications, focusing on recent advances to maintain the features of the active phytoconstituents and nutrients, and improve their release and storage stability. Furthermore, a drying technique that extends the shelf‐life of food products by reducing trapped water, will negatively affect the spoilage of microorganisms and enzymes that are responsible for undesired chemical composition changes, but can protect beneficial microorganisms like probiotics. This paper also explores recent efficient improvements in drying technologies that produce high‐quality and low‐cost final products compared to conventional methods. However, despite the recent advances in drying technologies, hybrid drying (a combination of different drying techniques) and spray drying (drying with the help of encapsulation methods) are still promising techniques in food industries. In conclusion, spray drying encapsulation can improve the morphology and texture of dry materials, preserve natural components for a long time, and increase storage times (shelf‐life). Optimizing a drying technique and using a suitable drying agent should also be a promising solution to preserve probiotic bacteria and antimicrobial compounds.

Fruit and vegetable snacks as carriers of probiotics and bioactive compounds: a review

“…Unlike HAD, FD is based on freezing and sublimation at the solid/vapour interface, which avoid adverse thermal changes and capillary forces at the liquid/vapour interface, thus allowing cell structures to be preserved. FD is the method of choice to preserve foods for long periods due to the satisfactory survival rate of probiotics and the preservation of the nutritional and sensory characteristics of the products (Fathi et al ., 2022). This technique has been successfully used to obtain dried fruits and vegetables containing probiotics (Rascon et al ., 2018; Betoret et al ., 2019) but it is an expensive and time‐consuming batch process which encourages the development and combination of alternative technologies.…”

A systematic review of drying in aquatic products

“…According to high‐quality drying technologies, these dried aquatic products keep the retention of flavour substances, nutrients, quality uniformity and appearance with desirable colour and high rehydration rate 14 . High‐quality drying technologies mainly include heat pump drying (HPD), microwave drying (MD), freeze drying (FD) and combined drying (CD) 15,16 …”

“…14 High-quality drying technologies mainly include heat pump drying (HPD), microwave drying (MD), freeze drying (FD) and combined drying (CD). 15,16 The development of highly efficient detecting techniques for dried food quality control has become an important issue in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. It was prevalent that nondestructive monitoring technologies were applied to detect the quality changes in aquatic foods processing, including near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), hyperspectral imaging (HSI), Raman spectroscopy (RS), low field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) technology and computer vision system (CSV).…”

“…25,26 It was reported that the moisture content of 2.25 kg shrimps reduced from 73% to 18% (wet basis) in 65 h for ND, whereas the solar tunnel dryer took only 10 h. 27 However, the solar drying machine covers a large area, and the solar radiation intensity is greatly influenced by latitude, season, weather and time, and the lack of useful technical information and practical experience makes solar dryers not recognised worldwide. 16 In addition, many safe chemicals have been proposed to control infestation, like primiphos methyl and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which have been found costly, ineffective and unsafe. 22 In Africa and Southeast Asia, a great deal of effort is being made to mitigate the challenges of insect infestation in dried aquatic products.…”

Less is more: Vital roles of bioactive equivalency in assessing food quality

“…The contents of primary and secondary metabolites in food were related to harvest time significantly (Akhatou & Fernández‐Recamales, 2014). Appropriate processing including washing (e.g., water or adding chemicals in water) (Subramaniam et al, 2021) and drying (e.g., high‐temperature‐based, dielectric‐based, low‐temperature, radiation, and hybrid drying techniques) (Fathi et al, 2022) can reduce postharvest losses of nutrients. Intelligent packaging, such as informative and corrective responsive packaging, could continuously monitor food status, enable food safety and quality remediation, and convey to users (Zhang et al, 2021).…”