摘要：In drying process; pre-treatments applied before drying as processing parameters and structure of dried material are effective on the quality of the final product. Osmotic dehydration is applied as a pre-treatment before basic drying and can be used in combination with other processes in order to improve the efficiency of the process. In ultrasound-assisted osmotic dehydration process which can be carried out at low temperatures, any damage to food's natural flavor, color and heat sensitive components also do not occur while water loss and mass gain increases due to increasing mass transfer. In this study, osmotic drying and ultrasound-assisted osmotic drying processes were applied to apricots. Osmotic and ultrasound-assisted osmotic drying treatments were processing carried out at 30ºC by using sucrose solutions with concentrations of 25, 50 and 70 ºBrix in which the water to fruit ratio was 4:1 in 5 different exposure times (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 min). An ultrasonic bath which works at frequency of 35 kHz was used for ultrasound-assisted osmotic drying process. According to the results, it was found that ultrasound-assisted osmotic drying treatment had a significant effect on water loss, sugar gain and weight loss (P<0.05) compared with osmotic dehydration alone for all osmotic solution concentrations, and these parameters increased by increasing solution concentration and exposure time at a constant temperature.
