<p>The work aimed to evaluate the effect of various pre-treatments and drying methods in order to maximize the quality and retention of bioactive compounds in garlic powder. Fumigation was the pretreatment that reduced residual enzymatic activity the most while maintaining the powder’s colour characteristics. Therefore, fumigation was used as a pre-treatment before subjecting garlic to various drying methods including tray drying, solar drying, microwave drying and hybrid drying methods for comparative analysis of garlic powder produced. Microwave dried powder at 180W achieved highest retention of allicin content, total phenols, total flavonoid content and antioxidant activity while tray drying offered superior colour preservation. In addition to reducing drying time and exhibiting a modest degree of colour preservation hybrid drying methods including ultrasound + tray drying (US + TD) and microwave + tray drying (MW + TD) showed a notable retention of bioactive. Remarkable stability of bioactive compounds was also demonstrated by microwave + convective drying (MW + CNV) and preheat + convection (PH + CNV), but with poor colour quality. However, because of prolonged drying time and non-uniform temperature, solar dried powder showed least amount of phytochemical while maintain colour values. Consequently, results indicate that with increase in temperature and microwave power there was increase in rehydration ratio, dehydration ratio, tapped density and bulk density. Presence of aldehyde, phenols, alcohols, sulfoxides, alkenes and nitro compounds in garlic powder was confirmed with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Overall microwave and hybrid drying methods are suggested for producing high quality powder while tray drying provides a more commercially feasible approach that retains enough bioactive with easy scalability for large scale food processing and pharmaceutical.</p>