Arendt und Zannini - 2013 - Cereal grains for the food and beverage industries

Rice 145
a neutral aroma and flavour and, when converted efficiently to fermentable
sugars, yields a clean tasting, light beer (Coors, 1976).
3.6 Conclusions
Rice is consumed in various forms including plain rice, noodles, puffed rice,
breakfast cereals, cakes, fermented sweet rice, snack foods, beer, wine and
vinegar. It is grown in every continent (except Antarctica), in over 114
countries from 53° north to 40° south, and from sea level to an altitude of
3000 m, thus representing the best cereal crop in terms of food energy per
production area. As reported by Fitzgerald et al. (2009), rice production is
endangered by several factors, such as increasing urbanization leading to
loss of farming land, urban migration resulting in fewer food-producing
farmers, biofuel policies that negatively affect the availability of grain for
consumption, decreased funding for rice research and issues of climate
change. All of these factors, either directly or indirectly, influence both the
quantity and the quality of rice that is available for food-based consumption.
A smart integration of different disciplines, such as soil and water
management, agricultural practices, plant breeding, post-harvest technology
and food processing, could offer a valid solution for current and emerging
or future problems associated with food production, security, distribution
and quality.
3.7 Future trends
Nearly 50 % of the global population, mostly concentrated in less-developed
countries, depend on rice as their major energy source. The question, of
course, is whether the rice-producing countries, supported by ongoing technological
developments, can keep production levels ahead of population
growth. Over the longer term, a rice yield growth of 1.0-1.2 % annually will
be needed to feed the world at an affordable cost. The real cutting edge
solutions to the problems of rice production lie in developing and/or adapting
strategies to break the yield barrier, thus improving the input efficiency
and, additionally, emphasis must be put on ways to disseminate the modern
scientific knowledge and technology to farmers. While these approaches
could lead to sustained productivity using current rice varieties, efforts to
develop new varieties that have adapted to and can respond to the specific
farming conditions, should be vigorously pursued. Lastly, from a technological
viewpoint, production and processing conditions remarkably influence
the nutritional performance of the final rice products. Increasing the
consumption of brown rice and germinated brown rice, both characterized
by a higher content of healthy beneficial food components (Roy et ai,
2011), compared to the well-milled white rice, will significantly help to
© Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2013