Abstract
This article presents the results of vacuum drying of cherry varieties: Lyazat, Merey and Aigerim. The dynamics of moisture evaporation shows that the largest amount of moisture evaporates in the time interval from the beginning to 4.0 hours of drying time. For example, in the Aigerim sweet cherry variety, in the considered period of time, for each hour of drying time, depending on the sweet cherry variety, an average of 3.21 g of moisture, and over the next drying time, the intensity of moisture evaporation monotonously decreases of 3,21 g to 1.5 g.Upon reaching the critical humidity in the product of evaporation, moisture drops sharply of 1.5 g to 0.75 g and below. Similar results with slight differences in moisture evaporation are observed for other varieties of cherries. Slight differences in the nature of moisture evaporation in the considered varieties of cherries are explained by the chemical composition, the form of moisture bonding in the product. Studies have established that when drying cherries, two periods of drying are observed. The duration of the first drying period for all studied varieties of cherries averages 6.10...6.25 hours, and the second period 4.50...4.35 hours. The critical humidity for all considered sweet cherry varieties aver-ages 30.5 ... 30.7%.The obtained experimental data on the kinetics of moisture evaporation and the curve of the drying rate of cherries at the next stage of the study make it possible to choose the optimal modes of their drying.