3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of vacuum pulse and osmotic solution on water loss (WL)
The kinetics of the WL of tomato slices is presented in Fig. 1. The WL increased with time for both osmotic agents. However, the osmotic agent strongly influenced the WL. The WL was higher for the solution of maltodextrin-NaCl. Moreover, the WL reached an equilibrium after 60 min for the solution of sucrose-NaCl, and for maltodextrin-NaCl, the WL was still increasing until the 240th minute, which has been previously observed (Ferrari & Hubinger, 2008) for melons dehydrated with maltodextrin. Ferrari, Yassui, Carmello-Guerreiro, and Hubinger (2011a) reported that maltodextrin solutions exhibit a larger osmotic pressure and solubility, resulting in more dehydration. Regarding the application of a vacuum pulse, the experimental conditions for the PVOD in this work did not result in a larger WL than OD, as observed in a previous study (Corrêa et al. 2010).