Department of Processing & Agricultural Structures, College of Agricultural Engineering Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 004
Paddy is subjected to a number of post-harvest operations like handling, storage, drying and milling, etc. to bring it in consumable form, that is rice. Various factors affecting quality and recovery of head rice during these operations were observed in a large modern vice milling plant in Punjab having installed capacity of 120 tonnes/hour. Based on these observations, it was found that if sound, clean and dry paddy is selected at the time of purchase and is subjected to proper storage, drying and milling, then the quality of rice can be improved considerably and percentage of head rice recovery can be increased by 5–8%.
