Freshly harvested medium grain rice, variety M202, obtained from Farmers’ Rice Cooperative (West Sacramento, CA) was used for conducting the tests. The moisture content (MC) of rough rice was 33.8 ± 0.2 g moisture/100 g dry solid (high MC) at the harvest. The rice sample with the high MC was divided into three equal portions. In order to obtain samples with different initial moisture contents, two of the three portions were naturally dried to 31.2 ± 0.1 and 25.8 ± 0.2 g moisture/100 g dry solid at ambient temperature of 18 °C–20 °C on the floor in the Food Processing Laboratory in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of California, Davis. During drying the rice was mixed frequently to ensure uniform drying. It took about 18 and 45 h to reach the 31.2 and 25.8 g moisture/100 g dry solid, respectively. The portions at the three MCs were kept in sealed polyethylene bags at temperature of 5 ± 1 °C to ensure no additional moisture loss before the drying tests. At time of testing, each portion was further divided into 500 g samples with a sample divider (Boerne-sampler, Chicago, IL) at the test time. The reported moisture contents were in dry basis, db and determined by the air oven method (130 °C for 24 h) (ASAE, 1995).