Osmotic dehydration of bananas

Abstract

The traditional processes for drying bananas usually lead to the enzymatic browning of the fruits, producing non-attractive dark products. The osmotic dehydration of bananas in sucrose solutions was performed to verify the possibility of producing banana figs with no enzymatic browning. The effects of processing time (1 to 33 hours), temperature (60, 65, 70, 75 °C) and sucrose solution concentration (60, 70 Brix degrees - °B) upon the loss of water and gain of sugar of the fruits were studied using the response-surface methodology.