Abstract:In this paper, carbonic maceration was used as a pretreatment coupled with hot air-intermittent microwave drying (AD&MW)for ginger. The effect of pressure, temperature, and treatment time were explored on the drying kinetics and quality attributes of ginger. The mathematical model of thin layer drying was also studied. The results indicated that when the ginger was treated under 0.2 MPa, 40 ℃, and 10 h, the drying rate of ginger was the fastest, and the drying time was shortened by up to 45% compared with the direct drying samples. The fitting results of five thin layer drying models showed that the R2 of Modified Page model was the largest, the χ2, 2and the RMSE were relatively small. So the Modified Page model was proved to be in the best agreement with the experimental results. When the ginger was treated under the CO2 maceration condition of 0.2 MPa, 30 ℃, 10 h, the contents of 6,8,10-gingerol and 6-shogaol were 2.49, 1.45, 1.45, and 1.36 times compared with the directly dried sample, respectively. Furthermore, carbonic maceration can retain the color of ginger preferably. The SEM showed that carbonic maceration can also increase the porous structure of ginger and enhance the permeability of cell membrane.
