Post-harvest Technology for High Quality Rice in Japan

Rice is one of the most important cereals in the world. Japanese people use about 9 million tons of rice per you. We use rice for cooked rice as staple foods and for processing, such as rice wine (sake), rice crackers and miso fermentation, etc. Palatability, eating quality, of rice is evaluated by the sensory test and various kinds of physicochemical measurements. Japanese National Food Agency started the storage of 1.5 million tones of rice in 1996. We carried out the storage test using high quality rices since 1995 until 1996. As indices for the quality deteriorations of rice grains during the storage, germination ratio, enzyme activities, fat acidity, physical properties of cooked rice were clarified to be useful. We applied colorimetric method for the measurements of fat acidities in the place of titration method. Processing suitabilities of rice differ depending on the products. Low amylose rice is more suitable for soft rice crackers and high amylose rice is preferred more for rice noodle. Pre-cooked rice products, such as frozen cooked rice, retort-pouched rice and aseptic rice, are increasing recently in Japan. In addition to above-mentioned physico-chemical tests, NIR spectroscopy,“Midometer”and“Taste sensor”are novel and useful to evaluate eating quality and processing suitabolities. Recently, rice wholesalers and retailers have been obligated to display the name of cultivar, location of cultivation and the year of production of rice grains which they sell by the Japanese Agricultural Standard Law (JAS). In order to detect the dishonest labeling of rice cultivars, we developed new cultivar identification method based on DNA polymorphism.