The aim of this research was to model the hot air-drying (HAD) of fermented soybean meal (FSBM) containing probiotic Enterococcus faecium . The HAD was performed to reduce the moisture content of the FSBM. The effects of drying temperature on cell viability and moisture content were investigated. Moisture content decreased rapidly with increasing drying temperature. This probiotic strain’s cell viability slightly decreased at drying temperatures lower than 50°C and was greatly decreased at 55°C. Four mathematical models were applied to describe its drying kinetics revealing that the Page model was the best fit for characterizing the drying kinetics during drying of FSBM with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9996. Moreover the Page model provided the lowest root mean square error (RSME) and chi-square (X2) and the highest modeling efficiency

Drying an agricultural product with hot air (HA) method causes a long drying time and results in high specific drying energy consumption (SEC). The dried product has high shrinkage percentage and low rehydration. Therefore this research aims to develop dried shiitake mushroom using belt-conveyor combined microwave-hot air drying method (MHB). The shiitake mushroom was dried by MHB at microwave power of 300 W 400 W 500 W and 600 W and air temperature of 65 oC with air velocity of 0.3 m/s and recycled air of 80% and by the HA drying method at air temperature of 65 oC. The samples were dried until their final moisture content less than 11.1% dry basis. The drying kinetics SEC of drying process and quality of dried shiitake mushroom were evaluated. The quality of dried product was considered in terms of color shrinkage rehydration texture water activity and microstructure. The results showed that the shiitake mushroom drying using MHB gave higher drying rate than that of HA drying method leading to short drying time and resulting in low SEC. The drying rate of un-blanched shiitake mushroom was higher than that of blanched shiitake mushroom. Dried shiitake mushroom from MHB drying gave lower values in shrinkage percentages and hardness but higher rehydration and larger pore size than that dried by HA drying. However the color values (L* +a* and +b*) of dried shiitake mushroom in all cases were not significantly different. Meanwhile dried shiitake mushroom from un-blanched case gave lower values in shrinkage percentage and hardness but higher values in all colors and rehydration and larger pore size than those of blanched case.