Abstract:Spray drying is an important method of fruit processing, which is widely used in the food processing industry due to its advantages such as high stability and good solubility of the prepared fruit powder. However, there are still a number of challenges encountered in the actual production process. On the one hand, the abundance of low-molecular-weight sugars and organic acids in fruits leads to a low glass transition temperature of fruit powder, resulting in sticking to the spray dryer wall thereby reducing the yield of fruit powder; on the other hand, the higher temperature in the process of spray drying leads to the loss of heat-sensitive components in fruits, resulting in the decrease of fruit powder quality. In view of these technical difficulties, this paper summarizes the solutions in recent years and puts forward new ideas, such as adding drying aid(s), screening fruit varieties, probiotic fermentation pretreatment and low-temperature spray-drying technology, to increase the glass transition temperature of fruit powder and reduce heat loss, thereby improving the yield and quality of fruit powder. On this basis, the future direction for processing fruit powder is prospected, in order to provide certain theoretical support for the preparation of high-quality fruit powder by spray drying.
