Classification of Hom Mali rice with different degrees of milling based on physicochemical measurements by principal component analysis

The effect of the degree of milling on the physicochemical properties of Hom Mali rice compared with low, intermediate and high amylose rice groups was investigated in order to differentiate Hom Mali rice from the other groups at different degrees of milling by principal component analysis (PCA). For all the rice groups, the apparent amylose content, alkali spreading value and pasting properties such as maximum viscosity, breakdown, final viscosity and setback viscosity increased with increases in the degree of milling except for the gel consistency which was reduced. Milled rice with a degree of milling of 15% showed the highest apparent amylose content, alkali spreading value and pasting properties compared with milled rice with degrees of milling of 10% and 5% and with brown rice. PCA could be applied to classify Thai rice varieties into four groups-Hom Mali, low, intermediate and high amylose rice groups-by two principal components (PCs). Rotated PC 1 and PC 2 using the Varimax method were better at explaining the variance of the parameters than the unrotated PCs. PCA clearly differentiated the classification of Rice Department 15 variety from the Pathum Thani 1 variety at the same degree of milling. Therefore, the stability of the degree of milling using PCA based on physicochemical measurements made it a preferable classification procedure for rice.