Drying of plums

Plums, although largely consumed as produce, are also used in many commodities and are frequently dried to extend their shelf-life. In this chapter, a math. model of the drying process of plums will be described, as well as an effective procedure to evaluate the model parameters (such as the mass diffusivity in the skin and pulp) from exptl. data. For parameter estn. the benefits of data from samples with no skin are shown. Because the waxy skin layer significantly slows down the moisture transfer to the plum surface, different plum skin pretreatments, recently proposed, are analyzed Finally, the main nutritional and sensorial changes in the plums due to different pretreatments in the drying process are discussed.