Plum drying is one of the oldest technologies for preserving and storing food.

The technical procedure for the production of prunes includes the following technological operations: inspection → washing → inspection → grading → placing on a strip → drying.

The preparation for drying fruits without stones is similar to the preparation of fruits for “standard” drying of plums. The difference is in the additional operation which removes the stones from the fruit as well as the later inspection which removes the fruits with the stone and significantly damaged fruits by manual screening.

There are two types of pitted plum products: prunes obtained by extracting the stone after drying and prunes obtained by drying the fruit from which the stone has been removed in a fresh state. In modern technology, both ways of obtaining products have their significance

In addition to size, as a basic measure of the quality of grading, dried plums should also have an appropriate chemical composition. The components of the chemical composition include: sugar content, acid and water content. The sugar content should not be below 35%, and the acid content, expressed as total acid, should not exceed 2%. The ratio of sugars and acids forms a taste, which should be sweet and sour.

Plums were grown in Serbia in the 13th and 14th centuries, where they were dried from the very beginning and used for trade. The first large quantities were exported in 1856 to Vienna and Trieste.

At the end of the 19th century, large quantities of prunes were exported from Serbia, and at the beginning of the 20th century, up to 108,000 tons.

In the area of Serbia and Montenegro, 13 varieties of plums have been created through history, by which we are recognizable in Europe and the world.

As a leading institution in the territory of Serbia that deals with the production of plum seedlings, the Institute for Fruit Growing Čačak stands out, which was founded in 1946 as a specialized institution for this purpose.

In Serbia, plums are grown on over 400,000 hectares with an average production of over 500,000 tons, which makes it the largest producer in Europe and the second producer in the world, after the People’s Republic of China.