Drying of parsley and dill and their dyring conditions

Turkey has a high potential of fruits and vegetables production. The most important store method of these fruits and vegetables is drying, in open atmosphere by exposing them to the sun shine or in mechanical dryers. Parsley and dill are also dehydrated by sun drying to put in meals for good flavor and aroma. But, due to the sun drying is carried out with the sun shine, it isn't suitable for all fruits and vegetables and it can't be possible to be carried out in everywhere. So that, drying ways by the other methods of many products are developed. In this study, the effects of drying operation carried out by the other dryer on the parsley and dill, were examined. For parsley and dill, drying experiments were carried out in a hot-air dryer made by APV & PASELAC and in a microwave dryer made by MAKİMSAN. At the end of the dry substances content analysis, it was observed that dills have 12.3-18.5% and parsley have 16.7-21.7% dry substances content Parsley were dehydrated till 6.4% water content in hot dryer and they were dehydrated till 6% water content in microwave dryer. Dills were also dehydrated in hot-air dryer till 6.4% water content and in microwave drier they were dehydrated till 4.7% water content. Drying experiments were carried out with air at 40, 45, 50, 55, 60 and 70°C temperatures in both systems. Drying experiments carried out in hot-air drier and in microwave drier showed that drying rate was accelerated by the temperature increasing and it was understood drying in microwave drier was carried out at very short time. The color is one of the important factor in determining of dehydrated product quality. The results of the color analysis of the parsley and dill dehydrated in hot-air and in microwave dryers were consistent with each other. But the result of the experiments of dill dehydrated at 70°C temperature were not consistent with the results above. This shows that dills are not durable to 70°C and for better drying results, must be dehydrated at a temperature lower then 70°C. For the experiments of parsley and dill carried out in a hot-air drier, Page and Exponential equations were obtained and by the application of these equations correlation coefficients were calculated. As a result, it was observed that r" values calculated from Page equation were higher then the r2 values calculated from Exponential equations.