Drying is a simultaneous heat and mass transfer processes. Drying kinetics is determined by both internal properties and external drying conditions. In this study, two important drying kinetics parameters of onions i.e. effective water diffusivity and relative activation energy of reaction engineering approach (REA) are determined. The generated parameters are used to model thin layer drying of onion at different temperatures (40, 50, 60, and 70 °C) and relative humidity of 20%. The effective water diffusivity is in the range of 2.8 × 10 m s and 8.1 × 10 m s. Unlike the diffusivity, the relative activation energy of the REA is independent on drying conditions and thus the latter approach requires less effort in generating the transport properties. The transport parameters can be applied for assisting in designing dryer units and evaluating the performance of existing dryer units.