This paper applied the parameter estimation of inverse heat conduction problem to determine the thermal diffusivity of vegetables. The physical mathematical model of one dimensional heat conduction associated with simple boundary conditions were solved to predict the thermal diffusivity by means of finite difference method in conjuction with conjugate gradient method. The results of illustrative example validate that good estimation were obtained by only taking single embeded measurement point adjacent to the position of heating surface. Another good performance includes the high converged speed of iterative computation, the apparent insensitivity of initial guess for prediction and the high reliability of estimated value. Futher, the results clearly demonstrate from testing analysis that under the predictable circumstances, the high accuracy of predicted value will be perserved by following:(1)reducing the expermental measurement errors,(2)enlonging the measurement time,(3)locating the embeded measurement point far from the heating surface,(4)raising the deviation of heating surface temperature and initial temperature.