DRYING KINETICS OF THE SLICED PULP OF BIOFORTIFIED SWEET POTATO (Ipomoea batatas L.)

ABSTRACT Biofortified sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is one of the foods with the highest contributions of carotenoids in the diet, especially provitamin A carotenoids. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the drying kinetics of the biofortified sweet potato pulp using the Akaike (AIC) and Schwarz's Bayesian (BIC) information criteria for model selection, as well as determine the effective diffusion coefficient and activation energy under different drying conditions. The biofortified sweet potatoes were sliced into chips and submitted to drying in an air circulation oven at 1.0 m s−1 at tempera...