Pulsed vacuum drying (PVD) of wolfberry: Drying kinetics and quality attributes

The effects of drying temperature (50, 53, 56, 59, 62, and 65°C) and pulsed vacuum ratio defined as the vacuum pressure duration versus atmosphere pressure duration (3:3, 6:6, 9:2, 12:5, 15:1, 18:4 min/min) on pulsed vacuum drying (PVD) characteristics and quality attributes of wolfberry in terms of polysaccharide content, color parameters (L*, a*, b*, ΔE, and C), rehydration ratio and microstructure were investigated. Results revealed that appropriate PVD can reduce drying time by 73.2% compared to hot air drying at the same drying temperature. The moisture effective diffusivity (Deff) ranged from 5.23 × 10−10 to 9.73 × 10−10 m2/s, calculated using the Weibull distribution model. The polysaccharide content, L* (lightness), a* (redness/greenness) of the PVD products were higher than those of the hot air-dried samples at the same drying temperature. The total color difference (ΔE) and color intensity (C) of PVD samples were close to those of the fresh ones. The retention rate of total polysaccharide content of PVD samples was about 49–77%, which was significantly higher than 30% of the hot air-dried samples. The surface of PVD wolfberry was highly porous, which may enhance moisture transfer during drying as well as rehydration processes. The results of current work indicate that PVD is a promising technology for wolfberry process, for the reason that PVD can reduce drying time significantly as well as enhance the quality attributes in terms of the total polysaccharide content, color parameters and rehydration ratio.