Influence of Rice Establishment Methods Affecting the Cooking Quality of Traditional Landraces in South India

Rice is a staple food for half of the world population. Green revolution paved way for high yielding varieties and caused disappearance of traditional variety under cultivation. However, due to focus on nutritional benefits, the rice farmer's sight have returned towards cultivation of traditional landraces. To evaluate this, the present research aim to study the cooking quality of various landraces under different water saving establishment methods.

The field experiment was conducted during Samba 2021, in wetlands of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The experiment was laid out in split plot design comprising four establishment methods as main plots viz. Aerobic rice (M¹), Puddled transplanting (M₂), Unpuddled transplanting (M₃), Direct seeded rice (M₄) with traditional landraces viz. Karuppu kavuni (V₁), Mapillai samba (V₂) and Seeraga samba (V₃) in sub plots.

In this study physical characters like hulling and milling percentage, kernel length, breadth and length breadth ratio were analyzed along with the cooking qualities like kernel length and breadth after cooking, cooking time, linear elongation ratio, breadth expansion ratio, volume expansion ratio, solid loss, water absorption index and water solubility index. The puddled transplanting treatment recorded higher hulling and milling percentage of 4.5% and 5.8% than the aerobic rice cultivation. Among the landraces mapillai samba recorded kernel length and kernel breadth 8.20±0.06 mm and 2.78±0.02 mm respectively. The water absorption index and water solubility index was found to be higher in puddled transplanting treatment with 4.4% and 6.4% respectively than the aerobic rice treatment.