**7. Conclusions**

Freeze-drying is widely used to dehydrate the plant-based foods including fruits, vegetables, spices, and even some nontraditional foods. Despite the long processing time and being an expensive drying method, it is preferred for the high final quality. Although some losses in vitamins and other valuable biocompounds can be found after freeze-drying, this type of dehydration method is the best to preserve nutritional qualities when compared to other dehydration methods, especially when operated under vacuum. In addition, quality parameters such as rehydration and porosity of freeze-dried foods are favorable for manufacturing variety of foods such as soup, instant drinks, cakes, etc. More recently, the process intensification of FD with innovative technologies or pretreatments allows overcoming some of the FD processing challenges.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.R.; Formal analysis, C.R. and S.B., Investigation, C.R., T.S.J. and S.B.; Resources, C.R. and T.S.J.; Writing—original draft preparation, C.R. and S.B.; Writing—review and editing, C.R., T.S.J.; Supervision, C.R., Project administration, C.R., Funding acquisition, C.R. and T.S.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada: NSERC RGPIN—2017- 04774—operating gran<sup>t</sup>

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
