Moisture content determination was conducted to evaluate the
influence of the drying pre-treatment in the yield and 2AP concentration
in Pandan leaves extracts. Moisture content of fresh
Pandan leaves was 86.5±0.3% measured by oven drying at 105 ◦C
for 24 h. The drying pre-treatment procedures were either oven
drying at 30 ◦C for 48 h or freeze drying at specific condition (as
mentioned in Section 2.3). As expected, moisture content of Pandan
leaves was decreased dramatically to 17.7±0.2% (oven drying)
and 17.9±0.3% (freeze drying). These results are typical for plant
materials where about 80% of water is removed and this is in good
agreement with Venskutonis [16] who found that moisture content
of sage was 11.2% after oven dried at 30 ◦C for 63 h which was
slightly lower as compared to freeze-dried ones at −50 ◦C for 42 h
(12.5%). While after 24 h of drying operations, Gutierrez et al. [11]
found that average moisture content of air dried and freeze-dried
quebac buckthorn pulp was 2.6% and 1.5%, respectively compared
to fresh pulp (87.6%). Arslan and Musa Ozcan [14] also reported that
moisture content (dry weight basis) of fresh rosemary leaves was
13.2% and for dried leaves after 9 h of oven drying was 0.04%. From
these results, one can see that the moisture content removed from
leaves depend on the method of drying, temperature and operation
time used as well as the biological nature of the plant itself