Shelf life of kiwifruit is short and requires conservation techniques to increase its commercial life. In this sense, the modern techniques used to analyze the changes of the product through the treatment allow developing new products with the specific quality characteristics required. In this work, the structural and physico-chemical changes of kiwifruit through the osmotic dehydration treatment with 61.5% (w/w) sucrose solution at short times from 0 to 300 min were explained. The SAFES (systematic approach to food engineering systems) methodology applied in kiwifruit is useful to obtain the internal composition of each phase, to control the fruit changes through the process, and to determine the behaviors involved in transports. Moreover, the Gibbs free energy, the enthalpy and the entropy estimation of each phase was calculated in order to analyze the irreversibility of the process. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.