Abstract: Abstract: The present study was conducted to clarify the quality changes and the influencing mechanism of conditioned pork jerkys under different drying. Porcine longissimus doris muscles of Chinese hybrid pigs (Doroc×Landrace×Yorkshire, n=8) were collected at 24 h postmortem, and then cut into the slices (4 cm×5 cm×3 mm). Three types of drying were assigned, including Hot Air Drying (HAD), Vacuum Freeze Drying (VFD), and Convection Oven Drying (COD). An in vitro digestibility test was then performed on the dried samples to analyze the drying rate, shear force, color, water activity, consumer sensory comment, and protein. Moreover, the Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (LF-NMR) and environmental Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) were applied to characterize the water distribution and microstructure changes of pork jerkys. Furthermore, the Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) was employed to reveal the influence of different drying on quality changes in the conditioned pork jerkys. The results showed that the drying presented a significant effect on the drying rate, shear force, water activity, color, and protein digestibility of the conditioned pork jerkys (P<0.05). The shortest drying time was achieved from the COD group, which was much lower than that from another two groups (P<0.05). Specifically, the migration and evaporation rates of water in the cytoplasm and extracellular space of samples were promoted effectively, resulting in a 33% increase in drying rate, compared with other groups. The reason was that the thermal convection in the cavity was generated to form the continuous thermal cycles in the convection oven. In quality indicators, the shear force, water activity, and redness values (29.96 N, 0.637, and 2.49) of samples treated with the VFD were much lower than those with the rest drying (P<0.05), whereas, there were higher values of brightness (L*), color intensity (C*), protein digestibility in the gastric fluid (PGD) and total protein digestibility (PTD) in the VFD group. The SEM images showed that the muscle fibers in the samples were formed a loose and porous structure after treated with the VFD. The microstructure in the VFD samples greatly contributed to the loss of intramuscular water, leading to the explosion of some contact regions of protease. As such, the samples in the VFD group behaved the changes of shear force, water activity, and protein digestibility. Simultaneously, the LF-NMR showed that the bound water was the main component of internal moisture in the conditioned pork jerkys, while the relaxation time of bound water (T2b) in the COD samples was the shortest (P<0.05), resulting in the best water-holding capacity. There was a lower degree of oxidation, cross-linking and aggregation in the protein of the COD samples (P<0.05), whereas, the protein digestibility and sensory scores reached the highest value (P<0.05). The PLSR analysis further confirmed that the application of COD was more suitable for the processing of conditioned pork jerkys, resulting from the lower degree of muscle oxidation and higher value of in vitro digestibility. The finding can provide a strong theoretical basis for the quality control and efficient processing of conditioned pork jerkys during drying.