Presented at the 28th International Rice Research Conference, 8-12 November 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam OP10: Quality Grain,

Health, and Nutrition

Measuring the eating quality of rice

Harold Corke School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, email: hcorke@yahoo.com.

Wide diversity exists in consumer preferences for rice eating quality. Different countries, regions, cultures, and end-uses may all demand different but very exacting quality specifications. Plant breeders have the difficult task of making genetic selections based usually on a combination of physicochemical tests and genetic markers in order to develop varieties that will satisfy the needs of the intended markets. It is important to develop a dialogue between food scientists and plant breeders. Food scientists should act as the voice of the consumer, translating consumer sensory preferences into objective dimensions that can be measured by instrumental techniques. Plant breeders should understand the relative importance of the various quality criteria, and work to establish reliable genetic marker-facilitated selection protocols. I will discuss the major quality criteria for rice, emphasizing the significance of amylose content, gelatinization temperature, viscoamylography, texture profile analysis, and various screening tests such as gel consistency. The relationship of such tests to the complexities of human sensory perception will be discussed. I hope that, through open communication, plant breeders can arrive at simplified protocols to facilitate the selection of rice cultivars that can better target consumer needs.

Background
Rice products are diverse and rice preferences are diverse. Predictive tests may often predict traits that do not in fact relate strongly to sensory properties. Imitative tests may use an oversimplified and non-representative system. Sensory perception takes place not in a simple starch-in-water system in the lab, but in a more complex environment involving salt, saliva, teeth, tongue, and memories. The question is: What do we need to know to select a genotype, based only on molecular genetic markers, in the near certainty that it will taste exactly as a specified consumer wishes it to taste? The complicating effects of environment, genotype environment interactions, and measurement errors must be minimized. The purpose of this paper is to comment on some commonly used quality parameter measurements in rice (focusing on starch-related traits), and raise discussion and questions about their relevance in a new era of molecular marker-assisted selection. Perhaps more questions will be raised than can be answered at this stage of progress in rice technology. Many underlying issues exist, related to the difficulties inherent in establishing clear, measurable indices for the sensory perception behind eating quality. Traditionally, breeders have required rapid screening tests for quality, such as the alkali spreading value or the gel consistency test. These have to be continually retested in successive generations of segregation and selection, so high throughput may seem to be as important as the fundamental parameter being measured. However, we do not eat a gel consistency test, and such a test measures gel behavior in a rather crude way independent of the evaluative processes of the human sensory system. Among other

Presented at the 28th International Rice Research Conference, 8-12 November 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam OP10: Quality Grain, Health, and Nutrition

factors, gel texture analysis by the human consumer is 1. Subjectivepreferences differ among cultural groups. 2. Mediated through a complex bite procedure involving the geometry of the teeth and mouth, and the action of the tongue. 3. Highly influenced by the incorporation of saliva. 4. Controlled by the brain!

Starch physical properties

Further advances in rapid, detailed characterization of the molecular structure of starch (amylose molecular weight and amylopectin size, branching, and organization) have the potential to dramatically enhance selection for specific starch properties. Hopefully, the physical properties of starch granules as processed into food systems will prove to be highly predictable from detailed starch structure information. Then, with clear molecular genetic markers indicative of starch structure, and with knowledge of how it Is expressed in different environments, we will be able to quickly identify lines with any desired eating quality. Gelatinization temperature The time required for cooking rice is determined by its gelatinization temperature. Gelatinization temperature is the temperature at which the rice absorbs water and starch granules swell irreversibly. The alkali spreading test is a convenient rapid test for gelatinization temperature due to its simplicity and small sample required. It must be emphasized that we have no intrinsic need or desire to know the ASV; it is a proxy for real gelatinization temperature, which in turn is a proxy for exact information on the time and energy required to cook a given sample to a given degree. One approach has been to develop rapid methods, such as NIR, to predict other predictive tests, such as ASV (Bao et al 2007). This may be a reasonable intermediate approach until big enough data sets on more fundamental properties can be developed, and genetic markers can be shown to do a satisfactory job of predicting these properties. The best fundamentally based method for determining GT is with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). DSC has the added advantage of providing more information than a crude index of gelatinization peak temperature. It provides detailed information on onset, peak, and conclusion temperatures, and on enthalpy or energy of melting of the starch crystallites. Our relatively early molecular marker-based study of the quantitative genetic basis of these components of GT (Tan et al 2001a,b) identified eight QTLs mapped onto chromosome regions where starch synthesis-related genes are located, for example, granule-bound starch synthase. DSC studies can also be used to provide data on retrogradation, which can be built into a model for eating quality. Cuevas et al (2010) have made a major contribution toward advancing understanding of GT on a suitably large germplasm collection. They reviewed the contradictory nature of the evidence for validity of various measures that purport to indicate cooking time, and emphasized the importance of a well-established validated test for this trait. They also showed that chain-length distribution of amylopectin was related to variation in GT within a range determined by distribution of chain lengths synthesized by starch synthase IIa. This is an approach that must be pursued in much more depth.

Presented at the 28th International Rice Research Conference, 8-12 November 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam OP10: Quality Grain, Health, and Nutrition

Gel texture Gel consistency is a crude measure of an important aspect of the eating quality of rice. There are better instrumental measures of gel behavior, such as with the Rapid Visco Analyser (RVA). Typically, a 10% starch-in-water mixture will be made in an aluminum canister. The suspension is heated, maintained at high temperature, and cooled over a programmed cycle (typically 22 minutes). During the cycle, the suspension is stirred at high speed with a plastic paddle, and resistance to stirring (viscosity) is measured. First, with gelatinization, the viscosity rises to a peak. With continued shear but at constant temperature, there is a breakdown of viscosity. As the sample cools, the effect of temperature (increased viscosity) overcomes the tendency of stirring to cause shearthinning, so the viscosity rises (setback). However, this is still a predictive test, although it has advantages of repeatability, ease of use (despite the initial expense of the equipment), and measurement in fundamental units. The various resultant parameters (peak viscosity, breakdown, hot paste viscosity, setback, cold paste viscosity) can be used in various ways to predict different aspects of gel texture or eating quality. Another approach to measuring gel texture is with texture profile analysis using an Instron-type instrument. Experimentally, this can be carried out on a gel made from rice flour (such as by using the gel in the RVA canister after viscosity analysis). A texture profile can also be made directly on cooked rice using a texturometer double-bite technique simulating chewing action. Textural attributes such as hardness, adhesiveness, stickiness, cohesiveness, and springiness are computed from the graph generated from the texture analyzer. These approaches have two fundamental weaknesses: (1) the geometry of the system is not directly comparable to the bite/mastication action of the human mouth and (2) a rice-water system is not similar to a rice-saliva system, usually in the presence of salt. Amylose content Rice is classified based on amylose content. Varieties with 12% amylose content are waxy, those with 1020% amylose content are classified as low-amylose varieties, those with 2025% as intermediate-amylose varieties, and those with 2533% or greater are classified as high-amylose varieties. Many of the properties of rice starch that determine a cultivars suitability for a particular end-use are dependent on their amylose/amylopectin ratios. However, we all know that the measurement of amylose content is not so simple. Amylose and amylopectin are complex and variable molecules, and the degree of branching and molecular organization can affect measured amylose content. Basically, amylose content (usually reported as apparent amylose content, AAC) is no longer a sufficient indicator of starch chemical structure. The predictive ability of AAC by itself for any given physical trait is simply not high enough. General comments Predictive methods have served an invaluable role for rapid screening at the breeding level, handling large numbers of samples. Major disadvantages are sensitivity to environment and measurement error, and a lack of fundamental relationship to the complex desired characteristics that make up eating quality.

Presented at the 28th International Rice Research Conference, 8-12 November 2010, Hanoi, Vietnam OP10: Quality Grain, Health, and Nutrition

What of the future?

1. Can we establish molecular markers for fundamental structural properties of starch, such as true amylose content and molecular weight, chain-length profiles of amylopectin, etc.? 2. Can we define sensory quality in terms of starch molecular architecture? 3. Can we further develop molecular markers for sensory-based physical testing of eating quality traits? 4. Can we cluster sensory preferences into a limited number of discrete groups (say, about six) that will serve the majority (say, more than 95%) of consumers? 5. Can we develop rapid molecular marker-based protocols that can efficiently and quickly convert all significant new germplasm into each of these groups?

Acknowledgments
I thank Drs. Lilia Collado, Jinsong Bao, and Yifang Tan for helpful discussions on rice quality.

References
Bao J, Sen Y, Jin L. 2007. Determination of thermal and retrogradation properties of rice starch using near-infrared spectroscopy. J. Cereal Sci. 46:75-81. Cuevas RP, Daygon VD, Corpuz HM, Reinke RF, Waters DLE, Fitzgerald MA. 2010. Melting the secrets of gelatinisation temperature in rice. Funct. Plant Biol. 37:439-447. Tan YF, Sun M, Xing YZ, Hua JP, Sun XL, Zhang Q, Corke H. 2001a. Mapping quantitative traits for milling quality, protein content and color characteristics of rice using a recombinant inbred line population derived from an elite rice hybrid. Theor. Appl. Genet. 103:1037-1045. Tan YF, Xing YZ, Zhang Q, Corke H. 2001b. Quantitative genetic basis of gelatinization temperature of rice. Cereal Chem. 78:666-674.