Improving Head Rice Yield and Milling Quality: State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects

Increasing paddy yield in rice does not directly translate to enhancing food security because significant decrease in grain yield can happen during postharvest processing of the rice paddy. In parallel with enhancing paddy yield, improving the milling quality of rice is essential in ensuring food security by mitigating the impact of significant losses during the postharvest processing of rice grains. From an industrial standpoint, maximizing the milling recovery of whole grain polished rice is crucial in fetching higher revenues to rice farmers. Significant advances in rice postharvest processing technology have been achieved which are geared toward reducing the incidence of fissures and chalkiness to increase head rice yield (HRY) in rice. The genetic bases of kernel development and grain dimension are also characterized. In addition to these advancements, an integrated phenotyping suite to simultaneously characterize phenotypes related to milling quality will help in screening for breeding lines with high HRY. Toward this goal, modern imaging tools and computer algorithms are currently being developed for high-throughput characterization of rice milling quality. With the availability of more sophisticated, affordable, automated, and nondestructive phenotyping methods of milling quality, it is envisioned that significant improvement in HRY will be made possible to ensure rice food security in the future.