The increasing demand of rehydrated foods is due to its better storage stability at ambient conditions and not requiring refrigeration. Prior to drying at 55, 60, 65, and 70°C in a hot air tray dryer, hot water blanching (HB), steam blanching (SB), and microwave blanching (MB) were employed as pretreatments. Rehydration of dried pretreated sweet corn kernel was performed in boiling water. The pretreatments and drying temperatures were independent factors that affected the dependent factors such as rehydration ratio, total sugar, ascorbic acid, geometric mean diameter, color, sensory evaluation, water absorption, mass, and geometric mean diameter. Peleg, Weibull, and newly proposed models were considered to describe the change in moisture content during rehydration. The proposed model performed better than other models and indicated the rise in equilibrium moisture content of rehydrated sweet corn with an increase in dehydration temperature of sweet corn due to higher R 2 (0.994), and lower chi-square (0.005) and RMSE (0.064). The rehydrated sweet corn obtained from samples processed with microwave blanching and dehydration at 70°C showed higher retention of total sugar, ascorbic acid, geometric mean diameter, and color.
Keywords: mathematical modeling; pretreatment; rehydration characteristics; sweet corn.
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