10000 tons of shrimp are annually bred in waterways and breeding farms throughout the country, while 95% of Iranian shrimp production is exported and shrimp industry in Iran is an export-oriented business. On the other hand, development of shrimp farming industry in some Iranian provinces would be capable of creating a huge number of direct and indirect opportunities. Thanks to superior quality of Iranian shrimp, it can be regarded as a novel product for export. After joining World Trade Organization (WTO), seafood industry would be benefited and this will lead to higher shrimp production. It can be mentioned with more than 1700 Km of coastal boarders, Iran has the potential to turn into a top shrimp export in the world. However due to the global decline in prices, in addition to changes in the markets and consumers demands, shrimp producing countries are trying to bring down production costs, while manufacturing new high quality products from shrimp. An optimization method, based on modeling of drying kinetic and physicochemical properties of dried shrimp is presented in this paper. Intelligent systems and machine vision are applied for optimization of shrimp drying process as a challenge in Iranian seafood industry.

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