Adoption of Early Harvest and Post-harvest Technology to Enhance Brown Rice Quality

Brown rice consumption remains low although it contains more important micronutrients than milled rice. The most obvious constraints include darker appearance, longer time to cook and harder texture. Bran layers of brown rice can act as barrier to water and heat penetration. Prolonged cooking can also result in bursting and opening of kernels which is not acceptable by consumers in general. Therefore, to promote the consumption of brown rice, there is a need to improve its cooking and textural properties.

The main objective of the project is to improve the quality of brown rice. The effects of maturity (early harvest and green rice), germination and different growing environments on brown rice quality, and factors determining varietal differences in germination speed will be considered. The quality includes nutritional and physical characteristics such as contents of amylose, protein, pasting properties, cooking properties, and textural properties. The aim is to establish: (1) Effect of early harvest on yield and functional characteristics of rice; (2) Effect of germination on functional and physical characteristics of rice; (3) Factors determining genotypic variations in germination speed; and (4) Genotypic variations in texture of germinated brown rice.

Funding

Sinh Chao receives financial support from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) through John Allright Fellowship. Operational support is partially funded through ACIAR project CSE-2012-077, and partially funded by AgriFutures under project number PRJ-011067.