Abstract

Soft Japonica rice is popular in Yangtze River Delta of China in recent years because of its high eating quality. In this study, high eating quality soft Japonica rice with early and late maturity was used to analyze their eating quality traits. The appearance, texture, and physicochemical characteristics, gelatinization and pasting properties, and fine structures between early and late maturing soft rice were compared. Early maturing soft rice had higher whiteness, chalkiness, gelatinization temperature, peak viscosity, breakdown viscosity, long branch-chain amylopectin, amylopectin chains (DP > 25), and molecular weight than late maturing soft rice. The higher gelatinization and pasting properties in early maturing soft rice probably be attributed to its higher amount of long branch-chain amylopectin, proportions of amylopectin chains (DP > 25) and molecular weight, compared with late maturing soft rice. Late maturing soft rice had higher amylose content, gel consistency, short branch-chain amylopectin, amylopectin short chains (DP 6–12), setback viscosity, and consistence viscosity than early maturing soft rice. The appearance and eating quality of late maturing soft rice were significantly higher than those of early maturing soft rice.

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