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

Keywords: freeze-drying; spray-drying; economic profitability; production costs