3. Results and Discussion3.1. Water

3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Water and oil absorption capacity
Germination significantly (p< 0.05) increased the water absorption capacity of brown rice flour (Table 1).
Other studies also report that the water absorption capacities of cowpea, green gram, lentil and bengal gram
are improved by germination [9], [10]. An increase of the water absorption of germinated rice flour could be
due to an increase in sugar content and breakdown of polysaccharide molecules; therefore, the sites for
interaction with water and holding water could be increased. The highest increase was found in Yellow-11,
Chainat-1, and KDML-105 cultivar, which contains higher level of amylose content than the RD-6 (waxy
rice). Germination significantly decreased the capacities of oil absorption of rice flour, except in KDML-105.
Rice flour from all cultivars had comparable capacity of oil absorption. The oil absorption capacity depends
on the protein content, which rice flour had only small amount of protein, hence, the oil absorption capacity
was low.
3.2. Bulk density
Germination significantly decreased the bulk density of rice flour (Table 1). Similar results were also
reported by [9] for the germination of green gram, cowpea, lentil, and bengal gram.
3.3. Amylase activity of rice flour
The activity