Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively evaluate the indicators of tomato peeling and optimize the technological parameters of infrared radiation, and to explore the feasibility of tomato peeling by infrared radiation heating. This experiment was designed using the Box-Behnken response surface theory. The effects of radiation distance (60-80 mm), time (120-240 s) and power (400-500 W) on the quantitative index of tomato peelability were studied. The parameters of infrared peeling of tomato were optimized by response surface method (RSM). The parameters of the best independent variables for the evaluation of tomato peeling performance were obtained: radiation distance 70.12 mm, time 200.4 s, power 464.7 W, corresponding peeling rate 96.19%, peeling loss 4.022×10-5 g/mm2, and surface temperature 104.06 ℃. The optimization results were repeated for 3 times, and the error between the experimental results and the model optimization results was within ±5%, which was in good agreement with the model. The study comprehensively analyzed the feasibility of tomato infrared radiation peeling scheme, verified the reliability of the model, provided an environmentally friendly and less polluting method for the peeling link of tomato production in the factory, and further provided a technical reference for high-quality tomato peeling.