Abstract: In order to investigate the water loss characteristics and mass transfer phenomena during combined infrared-hot air drying of pepper, the stacked thin layers of pepper were dried in an infrared-hot air convection dryer with different hot air temperatures（40, 50 and 60°C）,material thicknesses（6, 8 and 12 mm）, constant air velocity（1.0 m/s） and far-infrared power of 300 W. The results showed that: among the six drying kinetic models fitted to each condition, the mean value of R~2 of page model was 0.998 and the mean value of RMSE was 0.008,which was the best fit; the effects of different drying parameters on the drying behavior were analyzed, and the drying process only existed in the ascending and descending velocity periods, and there was no drying constant velocity period, and most water evaporation occurred mainly in the descending velocity period.Fick’s second law of diffusion and Dincer ＆ Dost model were used to determine the effective moisture diffusion coefficients of 2.17061×10^-9-7.33382×10^-9 m~2/s and 9.07967×10^-9-2.59394×10^-8m~2/s, respectively.According to their associated dimensionless moisture content prediction results compared with experimental data, Dincer ＆ Dost model has high prediction accuracy, and the combined infrared-hot air drying mass transfer coefficients were calculated to be 2.06044×10^-6-3.44995×10^-6m/s, and the Biot number was 0.680-0.950.