Study the effect of drying methods On the quality characteristics for dill and parsley

Abstract

This research studied the effects of three drying methods (solar, electric oven, microwave) and two different drying duratiqcontent (%), drying rate (kg/h), and dry matter color. The experiment werer conducted in the Medicinal Plants Laboratory at the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Baghdad, for the winter season of 2022/2023. The goal of the experiment was to determine the best drying method for dill and parsley plants that would give the best quality for each of them. Thirty-six samples were randomly divided into 6 groups (3 for dill and 3 for parsley). Each group of one plant was dried using one of the three studied drying methods. Each group was further divided into two parts (three samples each) with different drying durations (first duration, second duration). The results showed that Parsley had a lower moisture content (81.86%) compared to dill (83.67%), suggesting that parsley is more resistant to moisture loss than dill. The microwave drying had the lowest moisture content (80.69%) and the highest in electric oven drying (84.02%). For the drying rate, the highest value (0.01378 kg/h) was observed in dill, while the lowest rate (0.0115 kg/h) was in parsley. Drying methods had a significant effect on the drying rate, with the microwave method having the highest rate (0.113 kg/h) and the electric oven method the lowest (0.011 kg/h) .The microwave drying resulted in a significantly shorter drying duration compared to electric oven and solar drying, with a reduction of 5.6% and 6.4%, respectively. The drying methods showed a significant difference in terms of color, with the highest color value of 8 observed in the microwave drying method and the lowest value of 7.17 in the solar drying method. The electric oven drying method had a color value of 7.83, indicating that microwave drying preserved color quality. The drying duration did not have a significant effect on the studied parameters.