Document Type : Original research

Authors

• Laleh Faraji ¹
• Nafiseh Jahanbakhshian ¹
• sediqeh Soleimanifard ²

¹ Department of Food Science and Technology, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran

² Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran

Abstract

The effect of osmotic dehydration pretreatment on the quality attributes (e.g., color, moisture content, water absorption, shrinkage, hardness, weight reduction, and biotin content) of button mushroom was investigated in different osmotic solution concentrations (5, 10, and 15%), temperature (30, and 50 ℃), and time (60, 120, 180, 240 min) before and after final freezing. The results revealed that both solute concentration and temperature had significant effects on mushroom shrinkage. Furthermore, dehydrofrozen samples had higher quality in terms of biotin content (decreased by 32%), browning index (decreased by 94%), and weight loss (decreased by 8.89-31.69%) than those not pretreated in salt. The hardness of samples after salt treatment increased by 110.11%. Osmotic dehydration in 15% salt at 50C for 120 min was proposed as the most favorable pretreatment based on the highest water absorption (0.98) after freezing. These findings provide a practical basis for improving the quality of frozen mushrooms through osmotic dehydration, and may be applied to other moisture-sensitive produce. Future studies can further investigate scalability and nutritional retention across different osmotic agents.

Keywords

• Freezing
• Mushroom
• Color
• Osmotic dehydration
• Quality attributes

Main Subjects

• Effect of different processes on the functional properties of foods or drinks