Rice Revolution!

Hyderabad: In a breakthrough, the Indian Institute of Rice Research (IIRR) has come up with instant rice that can be cooked under four minutes and has iron and zinc minerals that is not the case with normal rice.

The research comes at a time when people have no time to spend in the kitchen for long and with both husband and wife working; the instant rice could well be lapped up by all. Scientists at IIRR say they could do this by chemical treatment using chemicals from generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

“We did not add other chemicals,” informed a scientist. The instant rice not only saves cooking time but also offers supplementary iron and zinc.

Additionally, the scientist said milled rice can’t be made edible by soaking in water at room temperature. Moisture content would increase only up to 30 per cent even after 2:30 hours soaking, while instant rice would contain 65 per cent moisture after 40 minutes of soaking at room temperature.

The ratio of instant rice to water around 1:4.

Normal rice requires at least 15 minutes if cooked in boiling water. Normal milled rice contains very low amount of iron and zinc which were in the range of five to 10 parts per million (ppm) and 10 to 20 ppm, respectively. Moreover, their contents further decrease when washed with water and cooked in excess of water. “We developed normal and Basmati instant rice which has considerably high amount of iron and zinc,” said Dr MM Azam, principal scientist at IIRR.

Explaining fortification of the rice, Azam said usually wheat flour and cereals are fortified with iron and zinc. “If the nutrients are mixed in conventional way, they would get washed away. So, we have invented a new method to fortify rice with iron and zinc,” he said. On the evaluation, the scientist said they had served instant rice and normal rice to some people but they did not find any difference in taste.

Further, he said instant rice did not require aseptic packing as the moisture content was in the normal range. The rice available in the market contains very high amount of water (more than 50 per cent), he said and added that therefore it was sold in aseptically packed package which increases the cost of the rice.

“We were in touch with the industry for transfer of technology, so people would get instant rice in the market. It would cost additional Rs 5 per Kg for instant rice," he said.

Disclosing about the forthcoming research on food products, Azam said: “Our idea is to develop instant pulses, oils and vegetables and the day is not far away when one could just ‘Heat and Eat’.”