Abstract:
The quality of rice can be enhanced by the hydrothermal process called parboiling, which alters
the physiochemical characteristics of paddy grains. As milling of raw rice without parboiling
induces breakage of grains, the present study was carried out to find the effective parboiling
process for the traditional paddy variety Addakari to reduce such loss. At first, the paddy was
soaked under two conditions namely, cold water soaking at ambient temperature (27±5C) for
three different duration (24, 48 and 72 h) and hot water soaking at three different temperatures
(40, 50 and 60C). The soaked paddy underwent three methods of steaming process pressuresoaked steam parboiling (PSS), open-soaked steam parboiling (OSS), and un-soaked steam
parboiling (USS). After that, the above samples were allowed for oven drying at 60C for 3 h. It
was followed by milling rough paddy using an analytical grade de-husking machine after which
the brown rice was polished to remove the bran to a certain level. Then, the milling recovery,
head rice yield (HRY), and broken rice percentage were measured. In all different parboiling
processes, the milling recovery ranged from 70.16 to 74.84%. In terms of HRY for the coldwater soaking, soaking of paddy for 24 hours with PSS yielded the highest HRY of 76.81%,
whereas paddy soaked for 72 h followed by USS led to the lowest HRY of 63.20%. When
considering the hot water soaking, the paddy soaked at 60C and steamed in PSS gave a
maximum HRY of 80.16% while paddy soaked under 40C continued with USS showed a
minimum HRY of 66.32%. In contrast, milling paddy without parboiling showed a poor HRY
of 40%. Based on this study, it can be concluded that the parboiling process with hot soaking at
60C followed by pressure-soaked steam parboiling is suitable to obtain comparatively higher
head rice yield which may be due to the development of hardness with increasing temperature.
It is suggested to determine the cooking quality and sensory properties in future studies.