Techniques for Estimation of Characteristics and Shelf-Life of Dried Pineapple (Ananas comosus) Slices

Although a drying technology majorly aims at producing dried pineapple slices for enhancing their shelf-life, it also simultaneously affects other characteristics of pineapple slices, e.g., nutrients, bioactive compounds, quality attributes, microbiological and enzymatic activities, physical properties, and sensory attributes, such as taste, texture, appearance, and flavor. The optimization of drying technologies requires consideration of overall attributes of the slices. Thus, it is important for pineapple drying industries to have knowledge of the techniques that can be used for characterization of dried pineapple slices. In this overview article, detailed procedures have been compiled for characterization of dried pineapple slices. Articles were extracted from Scopus (search phrase: "pineapple" AND "slices" AND "drying" OR "dehydration") and techniques were compiled for raw material characteristics, sample preparation, and the characteristics of dried pineapple slices namely as nutritional (moisture, proximate, vitamins C and B-complex, pectin, minerals), physicochemical (water activity, total soluble solids, pH, and water activity), functional (phenolic compounds, flavonoids, carotenoids, antioxidant and enzymatic activity), physical (mechanical properties, microstructure, shrinkage and porosity, shape), quality (color, texture, volatiles, rehydration, sensory), and shelf-life (microbiological, sorption, packaging, and storage) characteristics. © 2026 Wiley Periodicals LLC.