Assessing the product quality of mango slices treated with osmotic and microwave drying by means of image, microstructural, and multivariate analyses

Osmotic dehydration (OD) and microwave drying (MD) have been applied to fruits to preserve their functional and quality attributes. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between different parameters (shrinkage, color, image texture, microstructure) on the quality of three different types of cuts (oval, longitudinal, transversal) of mango slices when sequentially dried by OD, MD, and microwave oven-processing (MOP). After each processing, the samples showed different changes in geometrical parameters, shrinkage, color, image texture, and microstructure from inside the cell structure to the macroscopic level. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to select the most suitable cut type with the least separation distance between fresh and processed samples. The most suitable cut after the processing was the longitudinal cut which was associated with higher quality mango slices. This contribution provides an insight into how the cut types affect the drying, shrinkage, color parameters, and microstructure when studying the quality of dried fruits by means of multivariate analysis.