Abstract:Chinese jujube originated in China and has a long historical standing. China is the only country which can produce a great amount of Chinese jujube in the world. Modern research showed that the nutrition of Chinese jujube is abundant. Chinese jujube has great medicinal and food value, with high economic value and good prospects for development. Shrinkage characteristics of dates generally refer to volume shrinkage characteristics of whole dates. Large fruit and plump grain appearance of dates is the first choice of consumers to buy elements. The volume of dried jujube points to the consumer’s heart, and is an important indicator of consumers whether to buy. Jujube processing enterprises grade the date in accordance with its size, different grades dates have different value and price. Therefore, drying is the most important steps during the dates processing as it affects directly the quality of the product, and the shrinkage characteristics is the most important quality characteristic of Chinese jujube after drying. However, the traditional natural desiccation and desiccation in the drying room of the red dates has many problems. The conventional drying method for Chinese jujube has some disadvantages of severe shrinkage, long drying time and large energy consumption etc. Therefore, in order to improve the quality of dried Chinese jujube and reduce the shrinkage, it is imperative to replace the traditional drying method with the modern technologies. Air impingement drying technology was applied to dry Chinese jujube. The drying characteristics of shrinkage, moisture effective diffusivity considering shrinkage characteristics and the activation energy of Chinese jujube shrinkage were investigated under different air temperatures (55, 60, 65 and 70℃) and air velocities (6, 9, 12 and 15m/s). The dynamic changes of the regular pattern for the shrinkage characteristic of Chinese jujube in the air impingement drying process were studied, the results showed that the volume relative shrinkage ratio of Chinese jujube appeared to increase and then decrease with the increase of air temperature and air velocity. Considering shrinkage characteristics, the moisture effective diffusivity of Chinese jujube in the air impingement drying process through the Fick’s second law was obtained. The diffusivity appeared to increase and then decrease with the decrease in moisture content in dry basis of Chinese jujube. The Arrhenius equation calculated the shrinkage activation energy of the Chinese jujube was 1281kJ/mol. This research provided technical basis for shrinkage characteristics of Chinese jujube using air impingement drying technology.