From the results of the present work it was possible to conclude that drying temperature reduced drastically the hardness of green peppers and the freeze drying had an intermediate effect between vegetables dried at 30 °C and 70 °C. In addition, the springiness was higher in dried green peppers though an opposite effect was observed on chewiness. With respect to pumpkin, it was not observed dependence between fiber orientation and the hardness of the fresh vegetable. Furthermore, the drying of pumpkin reduces particularly the hardness and the chewiness of dried product but cohesiveness and springiness remain approximately constant.
With respect to color, the results obtained for the green pepper enable us to conclude that the air drying at 30 °C produced very small changes in color whereas the air drying at 70 °C originated more intense color changes. The values of L* have raised, while values of a* and b* have decreased during hot air drying. The color change of freeze dried peppers was small, as compared with the vegetables dried at high temperature. The increase of temperature on air drying increased the color saturation of dried pumpkin while it decreased linearly the hue angle. Moreover, the chroma of dried pumpkin decreased significantly with the freeze drying while the hue angle was maintained constant when compared with the fresh vegetable.