To study the drying characteristics and water migration of Saimaiti apricot slices after different pretreatment during hot air drying. Samaiti apricot slices was used as raw material， the drying characteristics， effective diffusion coefficient and activation energy of water were investigated at three temperatures (40， 50 ℃ and 60 ℃) after four kinds of pretreatment (hot water blanching， steam blanching， microwave treatment and sulfur treatment) on the basis of eliminating enzymatic browning， and the drying kinetics model was established. The relationship between model parameters and drying temperature was studied. Further combining with low field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)， the lateral relaxation time and pseudo-color images were used to elucidate the water migration in apricot slices during drying. Results showed that the drying time of apricot slices compared with 40 ℃ was shortened by 41.67%， 36.36%， 53.85% and 50.00%， respectively. Deff increased with the increase of temperature， mainly in the range of 5.9637×10-7 m2/s to 1.3530×10-6 m2/s. For model fitting based on drying kinetics， Wang and Singh model was the most suitable model for blanching and microwave heat treatment， with R2 of 0.9929， 0.9955 and 0.9942， respectively， while Page model was the most suitable model for sulfur treatment without thermal pretreatment (R2=0.9967). The results of LF-NMR experiment showed that the surface vaporization was the main factor in the early drying stage， and the free water was the first to be removed. In the late drying stage， the water diffusion was controlled by internal diffusion， and part of the free water was converted into immobilized water and bound water， and the water diffusion rate decreased. Color protection pretreatment combined with hot air drying had certain effects on drying characteristics and water migration of apricot slices. Analysis of variance showed that there was no significant difference in Deff of the four color protection treatments at different temperatures (P>0.05)， and the drying temperature played a decisive role in the water diffusion during drying. Combined with low-field NMR technology， the drying time of apricot slices in microwave and sulfur treatment group could be shortened by 4 h at 50 ℃ and 60 ℃ compared with that in blanching treatment group.