3.3.4. Correlations between physical properties and eating
characteristics of instant brown rice
The correlations between physical properties and eating characteristics
of instant brown rice including bulk density, color intensity,
lightness, ratio of rehydration, hardness and stickiness were
determined and shown in Table 4. It appeared that the bulk density
had negative correlation with rehydration ratio (P 0.001) and
lightness (P 0.01) but had a positive correlation with the hardness
(P 0.01) meaning that the instant brown rice with low bulk
density would be able to rehydrate better and have more lightness
whereas after rehydration its hardness would be lower than that
with high bulk density. The explanation is that the low bulk density
was caused by the more porous structure of rice grain. Unsurprisingly,
the porous structure would facilitate the water uptake leading
to the increase of rehydration ratio and subsequently softer