---

Dietary fiber is one of the important components in diet which possesses positive effects on health, in addition tohaving appropriate functional properties. Among plant sources, date seed is an abundant and inexpensive as well as rich source of dietary fiber. In this research, date seed was first fractionated into two parts including outer part (crust) and inner part (core) and then both parts were defatted. The two kinds of powders obtained from defatting crust and core were named crust fiber and core fiber. Chemical analysis showed that the amount of protein, insoluble dietary fiber and total dietary fiber in core were significantly higher than crust. Fat of crust was significantly higher than core. Also it was understood that the amount of total dietary fiber in both crust and core parts was high (70.68% and 74.17%, respectively). Water retention capacity and oil binding capacity of core fiber (2.80 and 1.29 gram/gram, respectively) were respectively higher and lower than crust fiber (2.66 and 1.40 gram/gram, respectively). Core fiber was lighter than crust fiber. The value of all the three parameters including water retention capacity, oil binding capacity and L* were acceptable in comparison with most of the agricultural by-products and commercial fibers.   

---

Investigation of quality characteristics of food products during different manufacturing stages such as storage, processing and consumption is important to reduce food loss. In recent years many researches have established for developing rapid and non-destructive techniques for quality control. In this study the potential of visible and near infrared spectroscopy (Vis/NIRS) in determining the quality parameters of lime including total soluble solid and acidity in reflection mode was investigated in the wavelength range of 400 to 1000 nm.­ The effects of different pre-processing techniques and spectral treatments, such as standard normal variable transformation (SNV), multiplicative scatter correction (MSC), median filter, Savitzky & Golay and the derivatives were evaluated. The model was developed based on partial least squares (PLS) regression. The correlation coefficient (R²) and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) for predictive model of soluble solids content was 0.949, 0.105 °Brix respectively. These parameters of the model predicting acidity was found to be 0.909 and 0.118 respectively. These results showed the high potential of Vis/NIRS and the important role of preprocessing techniques in developing precise models for the prediction of lime internal quality characteristics.

---

  Drying is one of the preservation techniques in which moisture removal through simultaneous heat and mass transfer occurs. Due to low energy efficiency and prolonged time of hot air drying, the new drying techniques such as infrared, must be employed. In this study, the effects of temperature and drying method on the kinetics of persimmon slices with 5 mm fixed thickness were investigated. The tests were performed at 3 temperature levels (50, 60 and 70^◦c) using both hot air and infrared dryers in 3 replicates. The experimental data obtained from drying treatments were fitted to 9 mathematical models in order to evaluate the drying kinetics of persimmon slices. The fitting quality of the proposed models was evaluated using the coefficient of determination (R²), root mean squares error (RMSE), chi- square (χ²) and sum square error (SSE). Based on the results, Wang and Singh model was found to be the best model fitted to the experimental hot air drying data at all temperature levels. In the case of experimental infrared drying data at 50 and 60^◦c, the logarithmic model showed the best fitting results while at 70^◦C, 2-term model showed the highest fitting quality. These models exhibited the highest value of R² and the least RMSE, χ² and SSE comparing to the other models

---

Present study were investigated to evaluation the quality parameters in drying of Aloe vera in three temperatures (40, 50, 60 °C), air velocity (0.5, 1, 1/5 m/s) and hot air recycling (0, 50 and 75%) in order to reduce waste. The results showed that with increasing temperature, the samples showed less resistance to color change. The highest difference dried gel was at 70 °C so that the increasing air velocity and temperature was increased this index. Also, the maximum change pH and shrink were obtained to be 0.58 and 86.2%, at 60 °C and 1.5m/s respectively in case without recycling hot air, while its minimum value 0.3 and 70.6% were at 40 °C and 0.5m/s in case with 75% recycling hot air, respectively. The maximum value of rehydration water was obtained to be 301%  at 40 °C and 0.5 m/s in case with 75% recycling hot air, while its minimum value 199%  were at 60 °C and 1.5m/s in case without recycling hot air.

---