Introduction:

The circular economy is an opportunity to transform the economy and produce sustainable competitive advantages, namely the valorization of food products through their dehydration.

Objective:

With the final objective of studying the effect of different thermodynamic conditions of dehydration of food products through a solar dryer, the initial characterization of blueberries, raspberries and salicornia was carried out.

Methods:

The characterization of the products was based on the determination of the moisture content, ashes content, proteins, fats, total phenolic compounds, and determination of the antioxidant capacity.

Results:

The moisture content in the three products were high, and similar, varying from 84 to 86%, while the ash content, expressed in wet weight, the highest value was found in salicornia (6.25%) followed by relatively low values for raspberry (0.98%) and for blueberries (0.29%). With regard to protein, the values ​​obtained were less than 2% and the fat content was low, with values below 0.5% in the three products. The total phenolic compounds (TPC) content found were 13.5; 19.4 and 35.1 mg TAE/100 g for salicornia, raspberries, and blueberries, respectively. The antioxidant activity showed values of 23.8; 34.8 and 41.7 mg AAE/100g for salicornia, raspberries and blueberries, respectively.

Conclusion:

The results obtained confirm the high nutritional interest of the products that can be dehydrated in order to increase their useful life, particularly useful in the potential preservation of its contents of phenolic compounds and antioxidants that will be evaluated in the next phase on the investigation.

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