Abstract: Fruit drying is a well known process mostly used for
preservation of fruits. Osmotic dehydration of apricot slices were
carried out in three different salt-sucrose concentrations and four
different temperatures. Also three different weight ratios of solution
to sample were conducted to one set of experiments. The dehydration
curves were constructed using Peleg-s model. Increasing the solution
volume increased the mass transfer rate and hence the solid gain
increased rapidly. Increasing the volume of osmotic media caused an
increase in overall mass transfer but a 'solution to sample' ratio of 5:1
gave the best product quality. The best temperature and concentration
that had a high water loss to solid gain ratio and an acceptable taste
were 40°C and 5%, respectively.