Weight gain during soaking of apple cylinders dried at different levels of microwave incident power and different air temperatures was modeled according to two different approaches. The first one based on Fick's equation of diffusion was not suitable to model the sorption data. The second proposed model was Peleg's equation, which gave a good fit to experimental data. The weight gain and volume recovery were higher at higher levels of microwave power; however, higher levels of microwave incident power caused a lower water holding capacity. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.