Identification of Thai hom mali rice using a refractometer

Abstract

Because Thai Hom Mali, also known as Thai Dawk Mali (KDML105), rice is very popular and its price is high compared to other Thai rice varieties, there is an increase in mixing KDML105 milled and unmilled rice grains with other rice varieties, leading to unqualified KDML105 milled rice products for export and unqualified KDML105 unmilled rice seeds for next plants. Instead of using traditional time- and energy- consuming procedures such as alkaline spreading value and pasting property tests, this paper proposes a fast refractometry-based method to analyze ground milled rice grains dissolved in an alkaline solution. Our idea comes from the fact that due to differences in the amount of amylose content in each rice variety, the refractive index of the milled rice powder dissolved in an alkaline solution can be used to distinguish the desired KDML105 rice from others. In our approach, only 0.1 grams of milled rice powder is ground, it is then dissolved in a 10% potassium hydroxide, and its refractive index is investigated. Our experiment using a temperature-controlled optical refractometer and four Thai rice varieties (KDML105, Pathumthani1, Chainat1, and a Thai sticky rice) shows that the milled KDML105 rice can be distinguished from the remaining three rice varieties with a total false error rate of 6.7% and the required measurement time of < 20 seconds. Key advantages include simplicity, moderate accuracy, and less waste produced. © 2009 SPIE.