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Application of instrument-based texture measurement to rice quality evaluation
C. DOMINGO (1) (1) International Rice Research Institute, , Philippines.

Rice grain quality evaluation normally relies on a suite of physicochemical indicators; although helpful, these indicators do not fully capture differences in quality attributes. In this study, non-routine tests were explored to enhance our understanding of rice grain quality, particularly in indica rice. Results showed that the indica rice collection is highly diverse, based on routine (amylose content and pasting properties) and non-routine (amylose content and pasting propertie) grain quality indicators. On the other hand, correlation analyses indicated that setback and lift-off, and adhesiveness were strongly correlated with amylose content while others correlated weakly to moderately correlated with amylose content. Hardness, cohesiveness, and springiness were weakly correlated with pasting and with viscoelastic properties. It appeared that pasting properties and viscoelastic properties yielded different metrics for cooking and eating quality. New viscoelastic metrics provide new insights that can contribute to our understanding of rice quality. Because correlations were weak to moderate among instrumental texture, pasting, and viscoelastic parameters, results indicate that these parameters can add value to current grain quality pipelines since they complement each other rather than indicate the same attribute. Multivariate analysis showed that rice accessions with different amylose content can have similar eating and cooking properties. Information on the relationships among these various phenotyping platforms will help rice breeders to develop new and improved rice varieties that match the demand of populations for specific quality attributes.