Development of mathematical model for predicting rice gel consistency by near infrared spectroscopy

Gel consistency(GC) is one of the most important cooking and eating characteristics of rice. The testing method of rice GC by near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was developed, and the prediction models of rice GC was set up based on the partial least squares(PLS) methods. Sixty spectrums of rice samples were calibrated for their GC values. It shows that the correlation coefficient between the PLS evaluation and chemical method is 0.95, and the standard error of calibration(SEC) is 0.66. To validate the calibration, an independent set of 41 rice samples of the same breed was used. The correlation coefficient is 0.92, and the standard error of validation is 0.78. The result shows that the infrared spectroscopy technique can be used to test the rice GC rapidly.