The present study investigated the thin-layer drying characteristics of kachkal (Musa ABB)
peel in a convective tray dryer with four different drying temperatures of 40, 50, 60 and 70o
C,which exhibited falling rate period. The initial moisture content of sample was 85.47% wet
basis which was reduced to 7.02 to 10.59%. In order to select suitable form of drying curve nine
different thin-layer drying models were fitted to experimental data. Among all the models fitted
modified Page model was found to be the best fitted model to describe the drying behaviour of
kachkal peel with lowest Ӽ2 value of 2.236 x 10-4 and highest R2 value of 0.998. The effective
moisture diffusivity was 2.05 x10-9 m2/s and 7.80 x10-9 m2/s at 40 and 70oC respectively. The
result indicates that effective diffusion coefficient increased with increase in temperature. Thevalue of activation energy (Ea) was found to be 27.22 kJ/mol.