The strawberry has a very short postharvest life due to its fast softening and decomposition. The goal of this research is to see how well a starch-silver nanoparticle (St-AgNPs) coating affects the physical, chemical, and microbiological qualities of strawberries during postharvest life. Additionally, the effect of washing with running water on silver concentration in coated strawberry fruit was studied by an inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES). Furthermore, the shelf-life period was calculated in relation to the temperature of storage. Fourier transform infrared-attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR), UV-Visible, and Transmission Electron Microscopic (TEM) were used to investigate the structure of starch-silver materials, the size and shape of AgNPs, respectively. The AgNPs were spherical, with an average size range of 12.7 nm. The coated samples had the lowest weight loss, decay, and microbial counts as compared to the uncoated sample. They had higher total acidity and anthocyanin contents as well. The washing process led to the almost complete removal of silver particles by rates ranging from 98.86 to 99.10%. Finally, the coating maintained strawberry qualities and lengthened their shelf-life from 2 to 6 days at room storage and from 8 to 16 days in cold storage.

This study investigates the impact of various pre-drying treatments and drying methods on the physicochemical, phytochemical, and sensorial quality of dried bananas. To achieve this goal, four pretreatment solutions were used before drying to enhance the quality characteristics of banana slices: citric acid 1% and ascorbic acid 1%, sucrose 10%, sodium bisulphate 0.5%, and lemon juice 5% and acetic acid 0.5%. Two drying methods were applied, sun drying (SD) and tunnel drying (TD). The dried slices were evaluated for moisture, total acidity, water activity (a_w), browning index, rehydration ratio (RR), reducing sugar, ascorbic acid, total phenol, and DPPH %, as well as sensory attributes (color, odor, taste, texture, and overall acceptability). The results showed that the retention of acid content, ascorbic acid, total phenolics, and DPPH in slice samples dried in TD was higher than that in SD. The browning index values in the TD samples were lower than those in the SD samples. Moreover, the TD samples showed a higher RR than the SD samples. It is noted that the pretreatment solutions used have an important role in improving the final quality characteristics of dried banana slices. The results of the sensory evaluation revealed a significant difference in the degrees of color and texture for the slices pretreated with sodium bisulphate. Meanwhile, the rates of taste and odor were significantly higher for the sucrose-pretreated slices. TD can improve the drying kinetics, shorten the drying time, and maintain the quality of the dried slices.

The goal of the present study is to investigate the effect of explosion puffing and convection air drying on the physical, chemical and sensory properties of dried seedless grape, and cost of operation. The obtained results showed that, the drying rate of puff drying method (PD) was faster than that of convection air drying method at the corresponding drying condition of (60°C and 1.5 m/s air velocity). The seedless grape samples dried by PD were the best for the most of physico-chemical quality properties such as color index, texture, rehydration ratio, and shrinkage rate compared to similar samples dried by AD that required a longer time. The seedless grape dried by PD method had the highest amount of total phenolic compounds (276.73 mg/100g DM) than that in convection air drying. The highest value of total carotenoids (84.44 mg/100g DM) was found in seedless grape dried by PD method. The PD drying process lead to retention of total flavonoids in dried seedless grape samples at a wide rate depending on the drying time compared to the AD drying methods. The PD technique exhibited the ability to obviously quench the DPPH radical compared to the AD method. In conclusion, the seedless grape samples dried by PD exhibited good sensory properties and better acceptability. PD can meet the four major requirements in drying foods: short time of operation, energy efficiency, cost of operation, and quality of dried products which indicates that puff drying is a good choice for grape processing.