Micro structural approach of potato and pumpkin drying and rehydration

The food structure is subjected to a change of the integrity during dehydration which will affect rehydration. Changes in the underlying microstructure of this deformation and rehydration generally fails in restoring the integrity and quality of the food material to the original status. In this context, there are not many studies performed which correlate cellular structural changes to the desorption-sorption behaviour of food materials after dehydration. This study was undertaken to understand desorption-sorption behaviour of food considering potato (cv Sebago) and pumpkin (cv ecotype) as the model materials during drying and further explanations on rehydration. Pumpkin was used to construct only for dehydration and rehydration graphs. For potato SEM images were taken for dehydration and rehydration. Corresponding behaviours show the irreversible trend of dehydration-rehydration exists and changes to the scenario of relationship of the cellular structure

A new coarse-grained multiscale model for the numerical simulation of morphological changes of food-plant materials during drying

This research project is a step forward in predicting the bulk-scale deformations in food-plant materials during drying in a computationally efficient and accurate manner. In the proposed numerical modelling method, a novel force interaction field was introduced to represent the mechanics of a whole plant cell during drying through its centroid. By utilising this novel modelling approach, the distinct deformation profiles of several food-plant materials were revealed along with the impact of drying situations and features in the microstructure. The developed modelling framework has potential applications in the field of food engineering in controlling quality attributes of dried food-plant products