I spoke to a master food preserver over the weekend and she told me a good way to test the finished fruit for storage was to put a few pieces in the freezer overnight. If the fruit had ice crystals in the middle when broken in half, then it probably will need more time to dry.
Since we will be storing our dried product in refrigeration, we could store a moister fruit safely. Our customers really responded positively to dried fruit that had a little bit of moisture still in it.
I also learned that once the fruit gets close to being dry, checking on it once a day is not enough. You must check on it morning, noon and afternoon. One day, some of our fruit which was moist in the morning got a little too dry by late afternoon and it may be extra chewy. Maybe we could mix it with the moister fruit and it will soften.
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