Quality assessment of dehydrated red bell pepper using tempering drying cycles

Abstract

Quality assessment of red bell pepper dices preserved through batch dehydration introducing tempering cycles were performed in this work. The parameters considered were: the percentages of ascorbic acid and final antioxidant activity retention, as well as the influence of calcium chloride on diffusivity and colour values. Although, a similar final moisture content was reached through different red bell pepper dehydration processes, but the one with tempering cycles had better qualities than those without tempering. Ascorbic acid and final antioxidant activity retention showed higher values and so were colour intensities compared to control samples in all cases. In respect to the effective diffusivity coefficients, there was an increment as the calcium chloride concentration increased. As of the treatments with tempering cycles, the best scheme was 15 min drying time and 30 min tempering time at 60°C.

Influence of temperature and ultrasound on drying kinetics and antioxidant properties of red pepper

“…The initial ascorbic acid content of fresh samples was 2.7±0.4 mg/100g of fresh sample. This value was similar to that found by Vega-Galvez et al [31] On the contrary, Carrillo-Montes et al [24] obtained an ascorbic acid retention of 75.5%…”

“…Thus, only the antioxidant capacity of the dried samples obtained is commonly provided, but not that of the fresh samples. Moreover, the analytical methods used to determine the antioxidant capacity are different [23,24] making it difficult to assess the influence of the drying process. In any case, the percentage of degradation of the AC was slightly greater than that reported by Zhou et al [4] also using the FRAP method, 65%.…”