Kinetics of drying and quality of the apple cultivars Granny Smith, Idared and Jonagold

Apple is nutritionally valuable and present as fresh fruit in human nutrition throughout the year. Also apple is a raw material in food processing, primarily in the production of juices, nectars, refreshing soft drinks, marmalades, jams, compotes, apple cider vinegar and dried fruits. In the last decade on the world market there is a great interest in dried apple products (commercially called apple chips). During preservation by drying the technological process aimed at the final product of optimal quality is required. The subject of this paper is the kinetics of the apple cv. Granny Smith, cv. Idared and cv. Jonagold drying in laboratory dehydrator for the purpose of pinpointing at which level of humidity the maximum speed of evaporation is achieved and at which level of humidity apple slices begin to change in colour and geometric shape. Parameters of the drying process were the same for all three cultivars, 3hrs at air temperature of 70 deg C and 5hrs at air temperature of 50 deg C. The amount of evaporated water is expressed in relative and absolute units of measure. The purpose of this paper is to determine which one of the three tested cultivars provides the best properties for drying, i.e. in terms of oxidation of polyphenolic compounds to find the cultivar which will provide that the final product is technologically and organoleptically the most acceptable. The results showed that the sample cv. Granny Smith expressed the least oxidation of polyphenolic compounds (browning), curved edges and shrivelled apple slices. After that the sample cv. Jonagold followed. The sample cv. Idared showed the worst results. Following the drying kinetics of all three samples, it can be concluded that the cultivars Granny Smith and Jonagold were achieving the lower maximum speed of evaporation, unlike the cultivar Idared. The cultivars Granny Smith and Jonagold have attained consistent drying and in this way the technological process was finished with a smaller temperature stress for plant tissue, resulting in a much better quality of the final product.