ABSTRACT
Aroma is considered by rice consumers in India and the world as the third highest desired trait after taste and elongation after cooking. This desired trait is one of the critical aspects of rice quality, which determines the acceptance or rejection of rice before it is tasted. It is also considered as an important property of rice that indicates the high quality and price in the international market. From an assessment of all known data, it is shown that there are around 500 volatile aroma chemical compounds, which have been documented so far in various aromatic and non-aromatic rice cultivars throughout the world. Does the rice industry have a future in volatile aroma compound analysis? It would be very surprising for the editors of the entitled book “Science and Technology of Aroma, Flavor, and Fragrance in Rice” and all the authors and contributors of the various chapters. Perhaps, we should look back on rice aroma compounds up to at least four decades, so that we cannot likely stop to say that the rice industries
there are various extraction technologies for volatile aroma compound analysis from the rice sample, but presently, researchers and scientists who are working in this area are continuously looking for economic and environment-friendly feasible technology. There are various extraction technologies, but constant efforts are being made in the development of new analytical methods for rice volatile aroma compounds analysis. In traditional methods, large quantities of solvent and time are consumed. These methods cause additional environmental problems as well as increase operating costs due to use of a large amount of solvent. Besides these traditional and normalized methods, several modern novel technologies for extraction of rice volatile aroma compounds, such as solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), appear as an alternative to conventional and traditional methods of extraction coupled with modern instruments, viz. gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), gas chromatography-olfactometry (GC-O), gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID), gas chromatography-pulsed flame photometric detection (GC-PFPD), etc., which are partially or fully automated. These modern novel technologies have a great potential and offer advantages with respect to solvent consumption, extraction time and yield, and reproducibility. However, most of these modern novel extraction technologies are still conducted successfully for the determination of volatile aroma compounds from rice sample at the laboratory, although very few applications like SFE are available for rice aroma extraction at the industrial level. More research is needed to exploit applications of these modern novel extraction technologies, which can be characterized by low limits of detection and quantification, and high precision and accuracy of the obtained results. This chapter addresses the importance of rice aroma, exploration of its modern and novel extraction technology, and research opportunities in the development of innovative strategies that can be moved from hope to reality in the field of aromatic rice industries in the future.
