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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Healthy Processed Foods Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #333975
Research Project: New Sustainable Processing Technologies to Produce Healthy, Value-Added Foods from Specialty Crops

Location: Healthy Processed Foods Research

Title: Influence of infrared radiation drying on storage characteristics of brown rice

Author
item DING, CHAO - University Of California
item KHIR, RAGAB - University Of California
item Pan, Zhongli
item Wood, Delilah - De
item VENKITASAMY, CHANDRA - University Of California
item TU, KANG - Nanjing Agricultural University
item EL-MASHAD, HAMED - University Of California
item Berrios, Jose

Submitted to: Food Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/7/2018
Publication Date: 5/8/2018
Citation: Ding, C., Khir, R., Pan, Z., Wood, D.F., Venkitasamy, C., Tu, K., El-Mashad, H., Berrios, J.D. 2018. Influence of infrared radiation drying on storage characteristics of brown rice. Food Chemistry. 264:149-156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.05.042.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.05.042

Interpretive Summary: The infrared drying (IRD), as a promising drying technology with high heating and drying efficiencies, showed positive effects on the color, microstructure, cooking, texture gelatinization and pasting characteristics of stored brown rice. IRD reduced the water uptake and volume expansion ratio of cooked rice compared with AAD. These changes might be due to the annealing and denaturation effect of IRD on starches and proteins, and its inhibition effect on the activity of those enzymes related with the microstructure changes in rice. Therefore, the IRD treatment could be used to improve the quality of brown rice during storage.

Technical Abstract: Maintaining the quality of brown rice stored at ambient temperature is an inevitable challenge in the rice storage industry. The aim of this study was to improve the storage characteristics of brown rice by using infrared radiation drying (IRD) compared to hot air drying (HAD) and ambient air drying (AAD). The rough rice samples with initial moisture content of 25.0±0.2% (dry basis) were heated by infrared radiation (IR) from ambient (20°C) temperature to 60 °C within 58 s, which removed 2.17 percentage points of its moisture, resulting in significantly higher (p<0.05) heating and moisture removal rates than those of HAD and AAD methods. Compared with AAD, IRD slowed down the increase in yellowness index, water uptake and volume expansion ratio of the rice by 47.9%, 41.0% and 37.9% during the first four months of storage of brown rice. Results also revealed that the IRD reduced the changes in the cooking and textural characteristics by stabilizing the microstructure and properties of proteins and starch granules located in the surface layer of rice kernels. It can be concluded that IRD could be used as a feasible efficient drying technique that can maintain the physicochemical properties of brown rice during storage and improve its storage characteristics.