Lepista sordida.,a native characteristic edible fungus in China,possesses excellent nutritional value and promising market prospects,yet its fruiting bodies are prone to quality deterioration post-harvest. A shortage of intensive processing techniques has restricted its industrial development.To screen optimal drying protocols and address this bottleneck,the self-bred cultivar‘Daxiangmo No.3’was adopted as the test material.Two conventional drying methods, natural drying (ND) and hot air drying (HAD),together with two innovative approaches,variable temperature drying (VTD) and vacuum freeze drying (VFD),were comparatively investigated for their impacts on the physicochemical traits, nutritional quality and volatile flavor profiles of Lepista sordida.The results revealed that drying method significantly affected the overall quality of Lepista sordida. (P<0.05).Relative to ND,VTD increased total phenolic content by 27.45%,and yielded the highest levels of sweet-tasting and essential amino acids as well as more abundant volatile compounds,making it well-suited for developing high-functional flavor-enriched products.Compared with HAD,VFD elevated the contents of crude protein,polysaccharides,total free amino acids and umami amino acids by 30.59%,45.85%,18.97% and 94.19%,respectively,while the rehydration ratio rose by 56.39%.VFD was capable of preserving the fresh taste and microstructure of samples to the greatest degree,thus being the preferred technique for high-end intensive processing.This study elucidated the regulatory effect of drying regimes on the quality formation of Lepista sordida. and clarified targeted drying technologies for different application scenarios.The findings offer a theoretical reference for constructing standardized drying processing systems,facilitating high-value utilization and promoting industrial upgrading of Lepista sordida..