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• Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) were changed in Polygonatum cyrtonema rhizome process. • FOS increased following by a decrease over P. cyrtonema repeated steam-sun drying. • Four cycles of steam-heated air drying was found to be an optimal processing. • Heated air or infrared drying was not suitable to replace the traditional process. The rhizome of Polygonatum cyrtonema (Polygonati Rhizoma) is widely consumed as medicine-homology-food in Asia for its tonic effect, which can be enhanced by traditional steam-sun drying for nine cycles. However, the multi-constituents variation in this process was unclear, and the necessity of nine cycles should be further discussed. In this study, the multiple constituents, including saccharides, amino acids, nucleosides and bases, lipids, saponins, homoisoflavones and cinnamamides, in P. cyrtonema treated with sun drying, heated air drying, each cycle of steam-heated air drying, infrared drying and microwave drying were compared. The results showed that the content of total saccharides increased in samples from one to four cycles of steam-heated air drying (365.0–945.6 mg/g) and decreased from four to nine (945.6–288.0 mg/g). The content of fructose increased in samples from one to six cycles (29.9–234.7 mg/g) and decreased from six to nine (234.7–177.7 mg/g). The abundance of most phospholipids and free fatty acids increased continuously from one to nine cycles while most of the amino acids, nucleosides and bases showed continuous declining trend. Principal component analysis showed that the samples treated with one to four cycles were wider in distance than four to nine, indicating the chemical composition tending to be stable after fourth steaming. If taking total saccharides, fructose, and phospholipids as the major quality indicator, four cycles of steam-heated air drying processing should be the ideal postharvest processing method to obtain better taste, flavor and functionality. Samples treated with heated-air drying and infrared drying were far in distance from steaming ones by hierarchical cluster analysis, which means these processing methods were not suitable to replace the traditional steam-sun drying process. Collectively, the above results will not only provide novel processing methods that will obtain the high active ingredients for P. cyrtonema , but also shed light on the optimization of processing technology for the industrial production of medicinal crops which need nine cycles of steam-sun drying processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]