Biochemical quality assessment of dehydrated carrots

Quality assessment of carrot cubes preserved through batch dehydration introducing tempering cycles was performed in this study. The parameters considered were: the percentage of carotene retention, peroxidase inactivation and retention of invertase activity, as well as the degree of rehydration. Although, a similar final moisture content was always reached through the different carrot dehydration process, that with tempering cycles had better qualities than those without tempering. Carotene and invertase activity retention showed higher values, and peroxidase showed lower values compared to a control samples in all cases. Respect to the rehydration tests, no differences were found in all samples. As of the treatments with tempering cycles, the best scheme was 20 min drying time and 20 min tempering time at 70 degrees C.