Improving rice quality along the value chain

Scientists Prom-u-Thai and Rerkasem recently reviewed opportunities and limits in rice quality and value improvements. They showed that quality improvement through breeding differentiated mega-modern high-yielding rice varieties from others. Rice value has increased with grain breakage reduction at harvest and postharvest. They reckoned that sorting paddy from Asia’s small farms into quality- and price-differentiated segments of the value chain is a useful guideline for rice quality upgrading.