Correlation between cooked rice texture and Rapid Visco Analyses measurements

Although amylose content is considered the most important determinant of co oked rice texture, this constituent falls short as a predictor. because cul tivars with similar amylose contents may differ in textural properties. Thu s, amylography is used as one of a battery of tests, in addition to measuri ng amylose content, to improve differentiation of cultivars. The purpose of our study was to determine how well amylography conducted with a Rapid Vis co Analyser (RVA) serves as a predictor of cooked rice texture, alone and i n combination, with amylose content. Textural properties of 87 samples repr esenting short-, medium-, and long-grain rice cultivars were assessed by de scriptive sensory and instrumental texture profile (TPA) analyses and relat ed to RVA measurements. None of the cooked rice textural attributes, whethe r measured by descriptive analysis or TPA, were modeled by RVA with high ac curacy (i.e., high r(2)). Sensory texture attributes cohesiveness of mass, stickiness, and initial starchy coating and TPA attribute adhesiveness had the strongest correlations with RVA measurements. Setback explained most of the variance attributed to models describing these attributes; the stronge st correlation was with cohesiveness of mass (r = 0.69; equivalent to coeff icient of determination, r(2) = 0.47). inclusion of amylose and protein con tents in regression analyses did not strengthen models. Exclusion of sample s that cook atypically, based on amylose content or gelatinization temperat ure types, slightly improved the accuracy of RVA measurements for predictin g cooked rice texture.