The objective of the research study was to determine both the effect of ultrasounds as an pre- treatment procedure on the drying kinetics of beetroot tissue and the energy consumption during the process. Also, there was analyzed the effect of that pre-treatment procedure on the content of dry matter and betalains pigments, as well as on the colour parameters of the samples analyzed. Beetroot slices were either sonicated using a frequency of 21 kHz for 10, 20, and 30 minutes or blanched for 3 minutes in water at a temperature of 90ºC. To dry the material analyzed, a convection method was applied, the drying temperature was 70 ºC. It was shown that the pre-treatment significantly decreased the dry matter content in the fresh tissue of beetroot by reason of the loss of compounds and water penetration into the samples. The application of ultrasound pre-treatment caused the drying time of beetroot slices to be shortened 4.5 to 9 % in comparison to the drying time of untreated tissue; the shortening of the drying time resulted in a significant decrease in the energy inputs (11-14 %) indispensable for drying the samples. Ultrasound waves caused substantial changes in the colour parameters of the dried beetroot: the colour lightness of the beetroot slices increased from a value of 23.8 to 35.6-37.6 and the redness and yellowness increased to 13.1-14.2 and 1-1.6, respectively. Despite the losses of betalains pigments caused by the pre-treatment process applied and despite their thermal degradation during the drying process, a substantial (p = 0.05) increase was determined in the content of red pigment (22.5-26.5 %) and yellow pigment (23.5-34.6 %) in the sonicated beetroot tissue compared to the untreated and not blanched samples. This fact may prove that the ultrasound pre-treatment of beetroot tissue facilitates the extraction of pigments from the beetroot tissue.