ANOVA analyses were used to correlate the different parameters
used in this work. In particular, the chemical composition variables
were correlated with the CIELAB color and rehydration ratio
parameters (Table 5). The darkening parameter, L*, had a poor
correlation to the chemical composition data. Similarly, a poor
correlation was observed between b* and a*/b* values with the
chemical composition variables. On the other hand a very high
degree of relatedness was found between the a* color value with
both lycopene and ascorbic acid content (Table 5). The latter
correlation can be explained considering that ascorbic acid is more
reactive than lycopene, thus protecting lycopene from degradation
(Nishino et al., 2011). Therefore, ascorbic acid oxidation during
drying may be proportionally associated to an increase in lycopene
degradation. This is the first time that ascorbic acid has been related
with a CIELAB color parameter during tomato thermal processing.
Lastly, kP and Deff had a good correlation with the chemical
composition variables due to the strong dependence of drying on
time and temperature.