A method is proposed for the simultaneous determination of the effective diffusivity and convective mass transfer coefficient in solids which can be considered as infinite cylinders. The inverse method was used to fit the analytical solution of the diffusion equation with convective boundary condition to experimental data of thin-layer drying kinetics of products with cylindrical shape. The proposed method was applied to the drying kinetic of rough rice, using experimental data available in the literature. The statistical indicators show that describing the diffusion process with convective boundary condition is more accurate than the description with boundary condition of the first kind, commonly found in the literature. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.