Abstract The drying kinetics of strawberry in a laboratory dryer was studied. The pre-treated with alkaline ethyl oleate solution and untreated strawberries were dried at selected temperatures of 50, 55 and 65 °C with a constant air velocity of 1.2 m/s. The drying rate curves showed that drying process took place only in the falling rate period. Thin-layer drying models of Lewis, Henderson and Pabis, logarithmic, Page, Wang and Singh evaluated based on coefficient of determination (R2), reduced chi-square (χ2) and root means error (RMSE). The logarithmic model was found to be a better model for describing the characteristics of strawberry for both of the temperatures of 50 and 55 °C. The values obtained from Wang and Singh were found to be more reasonable for temperature of 65 °C than the other models. The transport of water during drying was described by Fick's equation and effective diffusivity varied from 4.95 × 10−10 to 1.42 × 10−9 m2/s.