During dry-blanching with IR, the moisture content of the
samples reduced due to rapid heating of the material. Moisture
content of blanched samples reduced in the range of 13–23%
for three different zone temperatures (Fig. 2). The reduction in
moisture content of the sample could be a favourable factor,
if drying is the subsequent step, as it could reduce the time
required for drying. Thermal inactivation of an enzyme may
be considered theoretically as first order decay process. Thermal
inactivation of peroxidase at temperatures above 90 ◦C is
considered as monophasic, where as between 70 and 90 ◦C is
considered as biphasic (Rudra et al., 2008). In our study also,
monophasic, first order kinetics for peroxidase inactivation
was observed in all the cases. The rate constant ‘k’ obtained
for IR blanching was much lower