## 1 Introduction  
The consumption of dried fruits as a healthy snack has increased tremendously in recent years, mainly because of their high nutritional value [1]. This change in consumer behavior led to a rise in dried fruit production, which increased by about 29.74% from 2.2 million metric tons to 2.9 million metric tons between 2009 and 2021 [2]. To meet the increasing demand for dried fruits, fruit drying industries are focusing more on their bulk production without paying much attention to the preservation of nutrients and drying conditions. Generally, fruits are dried by various methods such as convective hot-air drying, freeze-drying, vacuum drying, microwave drying and infrared drying. Among these driving methods, hot-air drying is the most commonly used due to its easy operation, low investment and operating costs. However, this process leads to a loss of valuable nutrients within the fruits. Many studies have successfully proven that the nutritional quality of dried fruits is directly related to the fruit material and the operational drying conditions, especially the temperature. Drying at high temperatures of \(\geq\)80 \({}^{\circ}\)C causes several degradation reactions that not only affect sensory attributes (color, texture and flavor) but also participate in the destruction of most valuable nutrients (vitamins, enzymes, carotenoids, antioxidants and other bioactive components or phytochemicals) within the fruit [1, 3, 4, 5]. However, a low drying temperature, such as 40 \({}^{\circ}\)C, helps to preserve the natural components of the fruit [6; 7; 8]. Unfortunately, there are no strict regulations for the drying of fruits, and companies are free to choose the drying temperature that best suits their needs. Most often, fruits are dried at high temperatures to reduce drying time and maximize dryer capacity. At the same time, sales departments are well aware that visual preferences, especially color, have always been an important concern for consumers. Many researchers have also documented that color plays a key role in the acceptance or rejection of a product even without tasting [9; 10]. In modern research, many pretreatment techniques have been successfully developed that can help preserve the color of dried fruits [11; 12]. Therefore, selecting a product based on color can mislead consumers and may not meet their nutritional quality requirements. Nowadays, consumers are becoming more concerned about their diet and the nutritional value of food. Therefore, it is crucial to identify new quality parameters that can predict the quality degradation of dried fruits due to excessive heat exposure and to assure consumers that the dried fruits they consume are rich in health-promoting nutrients. Among the dried fruits, mango is very popular and is usually dried at temperatures ranging from 40 \({}^{\circ}\)C to 80 \({}^{\circ}\)C, to a target moisture content of 10-15 g 100 g\({}^{-1}\) wet basis [13; 14]. Several researchers have extensively documented the effects of drying temperatures on quality attributes such as texture, color, total soluble solids, sugars, fiber, moisture content, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, volatile compounds, carotenoids, phenolic content and phytochemicals of dried mangoes [3; 4; 11; 12; 15; 16; 17; 18; 19; 20]. In most of these studies, it was well observed that the nutritional quality of dried mango slices was best preserved at drying temperatures from 40 \({}^{\circ}\)C to 60 \({}^{\circ}\)C, while at higher drying temperatures, the nutritional and health benefits of dried mango slices were strongly compromised due to the loss of heat-sensitive nutrients, particularly antioxidants, volatile compounds, phenolic contents, enzymes, carotenoids (luteoxanthin, violaxanthin and neoxanthin) and phytochemicals.