Osmotic dehydration has received greater attention in
recent years as an effective method for fruits and vegetables
preservation. Being a simple process, it facilitates processing
of tropical fruits like banana, sapota, mango, pineapple etc,
with retention of their initial fruit characteristics viz. colour,
aroma and nutritional compounds. Osmotic dehydration is
a process of water removal from fruits, because cell membrane
is semi-permeable and allows water to pass through
them more rapidly than sugar. The driving force for water removal
is the concentration gradient between the solution and
intracellular fl uid. Osmotic parameters like sugar gain and
water loss are correlated with osmosis time. It involves the
dehydration of fruit slices in two stages, removal of water
using sugar syrup as osmotic agent and subsequent dehydration
in the air drier where moisture content is further reduced
to about 15% to make the product shelf stable. The quality
of osmotically dehydrated product is near to fresh fruit in
terms of colour, fl avour and texture. Ponting