Resumen de Economic feasibility of freeze-drying to obtain powdered fruit

María del Mar Camacho Vidal, M.A. Casanova, Loreto Fenollosa, J. Ribal, J.J. Martínez Lahuerta, Nuria Martínez Navarrete

• Fruit is a highly valuable food whose consumption should be encouraged. Inaddition, it would be desirable to design processes and products to channelthe surplus and take advantage of the post-harvest losses that limit its freshmarketing. Freeze-drying is a known industrial process that permits theobtaining of high quality products, despite having always been labeled asvery expensive. In this study, the economic feasibility of freeze-drying toobtain powdered fruit has been proven, as it yields a product more than twiceas cheap as when obtained by spray-drying, recognized for its low cost.