An interesting book entitled “Advances in Science & Engineering of Rice” has been recently published, covering the science and technology of the production and processing of rice. It is wholly devoted to different aspects of rice processing. Total of 16 chapters are included. The book starts with an overview on the rice production statistics, rice compositions and structure, factors affecting cultivation, statistics of postharvest losses, by-products from rice, environmental impacts and sustainable in rice production in the opening chapter. The second chapter explains the genetic development of rice cultivars for improving the diversifications of physicochemical and nutritional properties of rice. The second part of the book discusses the harvesting and processing aspects of rice. It elucidates the harvesting methods of rice with complete economic and energy evaluation techniques. In addition, it presents drying aspects of rice including moisture measurement methods, equilibrium moisture content and moisture sorption isotherm, conditions to control rice fissuring, different drying methods, and drying kinetics and modeling. It considers a relatively good chapter on the basics of rice drying. The importance of aeration during storage of rice in bins and its role in quality, detailed design procedures of the aeration system with appropriate equations have been discussed in the chapter. The terminologies on rice milling, mechanisms, and types of milling operation are also included. The aging of rice strongly affects the physicochemical properties, cooking quality and the functionality of the rice-based products. Mechanisms of rice aging are clearly explained in the chapter. Parboiling – the stage before milling of paddy has been described well by focusing the process, and its benefits including increase in yield, storage stability, shelf life, and the health benefits (e.g., higher vitamin B, micronutrients, resistant starch, and low glycemic index). Furthermore, the chapter takes into account the methods of parboiling and associated unit operations.
The third part presents the microbial safety of rice during storage and processing. It discusses potential mycotoxigenic fungi for mycotoxins contaminations, the prevalence of microbial and their spoilage, microbial growth rate as a function of temperature and moisture, conditions of fungal growth, heavy metals contaminations. In addition, size and shape, mass volume-area characteristics, surface properties, dielectric properties, thermal properties, mechanical properties, rheological and textural properties of rice have been described comprehensively with terminologies, measurement techniques, and selected data. This part also covers colorimetric properties, compositions, and nutrients of rice. The chapter further focuses on fortification of rice, its controlling factors, and available technologies. The rice milling, processing of by-products, quality attributes, functional properties, and utilization of by-products are thoroughly discussed in the fourth part. There are numbers of non-food applications of rice and numbers of chapters discuss the uses of rice by-products, such as straw, husk, rice bran oil, and husk ash.
The list of contributors is a balanced one, representing various rice producing countries; and contributed chapters are with in their areas of expertise. The book lacks the biographies of editors, which is unusual. The title of the book should be “Advances in Science and Technology of Rice” since it contains mainly technology with relatively low depth of engineering aspects. This book would be interesting to the graduate students and professionals working in the field of rice and cereal industries. I enjoyed reading this book.