Drying is applied to lower the moisture content of fish to a level that can prevent the growth of mould

and infestation of micro-organism and thus minimizes microbial degradation. The goal of this work was

to optimize the process conditions during electrical oven drying of catfish. Moisture content (MC) was

quantitatively investigated during the drying process of catfish sizes using response surface methodology

(RSM) to obtain minimum moisture content. The independent process variables for the drying process

were temperature (50–70 ◦C), product thickness (10–20 mm), salt concentration (0–20%) and drying time

(480–600 min.). Two factorial interaction (2FI) regression model describing the effects of independent

drying process variables on the moisture content was developed. The effects of temperature and drying

time were more pronounced for MC than the thickness and salt concentration.The optimum conditions

were found to be temperature = 63.43 ◦C, product thickness = 14.81mm, salt concentration = 9.07% and

drying time = 600 min. At these optimum conditions, moisture content was found to be 2.64% w.b. Validation

of experimental results with the empirical model was evaluated using coefficient of correlation

(R2) which was found for the model equation as, R2 = 0.994.