Hot air drying characteristics and nutrients of apricot armeniaca vulgaris lam pretreated with Radio Frequency(RF)

Apricot pretreated with RF and then dried with convective hot air at 65℃, 3.0m/s in this research. RF pretreatment time of 20, 30, 40 and 50min were chosen. Results showed that, there is only falling rate period during apricot hot air drying, and the drying rate of apricot is improved significantly; Herdenson and Pabis model is suitable for apricot hot air drying; retentions of flavonoids, polyphenols and Vc in dried apricot were higher than those of fresh apricot; when RF treating time was chosen 30mins, nutrients retentions of Vc, flavonoid and polyphenols were 0.9543mg/100g, 5.4089mg/100g and 7.3382mg/100g, separately.   Keywords: apricot fruit, hot air drying, drying rate, nutrients, radio frequency