Abstract

The milling and cooking qualities of rice depend mainly on the variety of paddy and its parboiling characteristics. Therefore, paddy varieties Mahamaya and Swarna were evaluated for their parboiling characteristics. An experiment was conducted by soaking paddy at 60oC for 4 h, steaming for 15 min and drying under shade for 24 h. Degree of parboiling was evaluated in terms of equilibrium moisture content at saturation, alkali spreading value, sedimentation and water uptake ratio. The parboiled sample had shown better milling quality in terms of more head yield, lower breakage and higher milling efficiency. In addition, itacquired better cooking quality as shown by lower water uptake at 97oC and minimum leaching loss during cooking. The bran oil quality was also found to be more in parboiled rice.

Keywords: Cooking quality, Milling quality, Oil content in bran, Parboiled rice, Parboiling