Investigation of different drying methods on color and shrinkage parameters in drying of red beetroot

Drying is one of the most important post-harvesting processes with the aim of increasing the storage time. The present study investigates and compares color changes and shrinkage of red beetroot thin layers in four different drying methods (hot air flow, microwave, vacuum and freeze drying). The process of changing these two parameters was simulated by fitting to different models. The experiments were carried out in hot air and vacuum air dryers at three temperature levels (50, 70 and 90 °C), in microwave dryer at a power level of 180, 360 and 600 W, and in a freeze dryer at -50 °C. The results showed that the changes in the brightness index (L) and yellowness (b) relative to the time were increasing and the trend of changes in the red index (a) was decreasing. The slightest changes in the parameters of brightness, redness and yellowness (values is 0.74, 0.23, and 0.03) occurred in freeze drying, microwave and vacuum, respectively. The overall results showed that the highest amount of color change (ΔE) was 1.59 in drying by microwave and at 180 W, and the lowest drying rate was 0.76 in freeze drying. Also, shrinkage changes in sugar beet samples showed that the use of freeze dryer reduced the amount of shrinkage by 10-25% compared to the other three methods of drying. Also, modeling of color parameters and shrinkage showed that exponential models have higher ability to predict the process of color variation and shrinkage.