16 - Postharvest technology: Rice storage and cooling conservation

Abstract

Over the last decade, there have been massive investments and research to improve rice yield per hectare. Alongside successful stories of improved rice yields are corresponding concerns stemming from pre- and postharvest rice quality- and safety-related issues. Collectively, such concerns in rice production, handling, and storage systems present public health and economic problems. Today the need to understand the dynamics of rice quality and safety as affected by various agents of deterioration in storage environments due to microbial and insect pest activity, as well as genetic resistance factors of rice to quality impairment, are at the forefront of research; this need is particularly gaining momentum as the rice consumer becomes more affluent, quality conscious and the rice industry adopts new technologies and facilities for postharvest rice management. To rice consumers and producers alike, perhaps the single most serious concern is the potential growth of toxigenic fungi on rice during storage since this could lead to contamination of the rice with mycotoxins. Grain contaminated with toxic mycotoxins such as aflatoxin pose huge health-related risks to consumers and contribute to significant socioeconomic losses. That withstanding, diminished functional, sensory, and nutritional attributes hugely impact the investment returns of producers and processors. Therefore, means to minimize such storage-related losses continues to lead scientific discourse and is attracting tremendous research attention of leading international organizations concerned with food security. The author understands that discourse on rice storage is incomplete without reflections on nutrition-related losses. However, this chapter will be limited to discussing fundamentals of rice storage, rice storage systems, and agents of rice quantitative and qualitative losses. The authors have also made a deliberate effort to highlight, albeit briefly, some technologies that are perceived as emerging and have potential to affect the rice storage landscape, at least in the US rice industry. The “cabling” and “cooling conservation” technologies are introduced and discussed.