Evaluation of innovative drying technologies in drying considering product quality and drying efficiency.

is widely used as healthy food and herbal medicine for its anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antihypertensive, and antiviral functions. The drying behavior and physicochemical quality of were studied to evaluate its adaptability under four drying techniques: hot air drying (HAD), medium-and short-wave infrared drying (MSWID), pulsed vacuum drying (PVD), and radio frequency-HAD (RF-HAD). Compared with HAD and MSWID, PVD and RF-HAD can form beneficial microporous channels for moisture migration inside , thus shortening drying time by 32.56-42.51 % and increasing geniposide content by 3.31-13.77 %, while better preserving the brightness and redness. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis confirmed the RF-HAD dried samples showed the best antioxidant activity with the highest content of active ingredients (chlorogenic acid, geniposide), and there was a significant positive correlation between sample color and yellow pigment content. After comprehensive comparison, RF-HAD is proposed to be the most suitable method for drying. This research could provide scientific basis and technical support for promoting the high quality development of industrial processing of .