Application of Response Surface Methodology based D-optimal Design for Modeling and Optimisation of Osmotic dehydration of Zucchini

Abstract

The current study aims to optimize the osmotic dehydration parameter of a food product by adjusting the quantities of several osmotic agents. In this study, a cube-shaped Zucchini is utilized as an example food product. Maltose, fructose, lactose, and fructo-oligosaccharide (FOS) were used as osmotic agents at varying concentrations (30%, 40%, and 50%) at a temperature of 26 °C. The Dimensionless moisture content (DMC), Water loss (WL), and Solid gain (SG) were chosen as performance parameters. Using the dataset collected from the experiments, the D-optimal approach-based design was used for the design of the experiment (DoE). The response surface methodology (RSM) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for each osmotic agent to build prediction models in the form of simple mathematical expressions. The resulting prognostic model was evaluated using several regression and error indices. The model's regression coefficients were admirable, with R ranging from 0.988 to 0.9938 and R2 ranging from 0.9761 to 0.9878. As assessed by mean squared error, the predicted error varied from 0.001 to 0.0415. The D-optimal and RSM-based prognostic model is demonstrated as a robust prognostic model due to improved regression indices and fewer model errors. The desirability technique was employed for parametric optimization to achieve the best outcomes. Lactose yielded the best water loss of 5.88 g/g idm, a good solid gain of 0.872 g/g idm, and dimensionless moisture content of 0.704 g/g idm.