Abstract
Drying is one of the most common methods for processing and preserving sea cucumber. Based on the research of pretreatment and drying process, this paper develops a dried sea cucumber product that can be quickly rehydrated in only 8 hours. By setting the pretreatment at heated water temperature of 80°C and the drying temperature from 30°C to 60°C, the fitting model is found by comparing empirical formulas and artificial neural networks. The ANN-based model was demonstrated to fit the experimental data for the adequate drying of sea cucumber. Following the increased drying temperature, the drying time was decreased and the rehydration ratio was increased. The sensory evaluation and texture properties dried at 40°C and 50°C were much better than those dried at 30°C and 60°C. Microstructure of rehydrated dried sample showed that increasing the temperature leads to the increase of fiber pore space, and the rehydration rate increases. The results of drying time and the rehydration properties of sea cucumber showed that 50°C is the best drying condition for hot-air drying of sea cucumber. The developed rapid rehydration dried sea cucumber can effectively simplify the rehydration time and steps of the dried sea cucumber and improve the quality of the sea cucumber, and it is considered to be a good technology for drying the sea cucumber and making a fast rehydration dried sea cucumber that can be further used for value-added product.
Highlights
Sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) is one of the most commercially valuable seafood products
Md where Moisture Content (MC) is the moisture content (%, dry basis), M is the mass of samples (g), and Md is the mass of dry matter
Prior to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observations, the rehydrated samples were lyophilized for 12 h in order to stabilize the structure. e specimen fragments were glued to the holder and sputter-coated with gold, and we examined the inner structure and photographed it using a scanning electron microscope (JSM7800F, JEOL Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) at an accelerating voltage of 1 kV. e magnification was 1000 [21]
Summary
Sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) is one of the most commercially valuable seafood products. Hot-air drying is the most widely used drying method at present, and it is widely used in drying sea cucumbers. To the best of our knowledge, there are few reports on the effects of hot-air drying method on the quality of sea cucumbers. Traditional dried sea cucumbers contain inedible parts, including sand, oral tentacles, and calcareous ring which are needed to be removed while rehydration. In order to simplify the complex rehydration steps, traditional trying processing steps were changed in this study, and the non-edible part of sea cucumber was moved before drying, which makes rehydration steps become simple and fast. E main purpose of the current study was to examine the quality changes of sea cucumber using hot-air drying process. No research endeavours are yet executed for analysis of quality of sea cucumber using ANN. e rehydration rate, organoleptic attribute, texture properties, and the microstructure of rehydrated dried sea cucumbers were studied. e specific objectives are to (1) explore effects of different hot-air drying conditions or parameters on quality of sea cucumber; (2) analyze the correlation between empirical formulas and artificial neural network fitting model; and (3) provide more insights into the relationship of physicochemical properties and the quality changes of sea cucumber
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
