BLOG

By "drying" is meant the phase of the post-harvest system during which the product is rapidly dehydrated to a so-called "backup" moisture. This desiccation is intended to sufficiently reduce the moisture content of the grain to ensure favorable conditions for storage or subsequent processing of the product.

While ignoring the barriers of the income as well as the living standards of the people living in the state, country or city, rice is one of the grains that are affordable by the large population in any country. Besides, rice is stable food in most of the Asian countries. This is clear by now that a huge amount of quantity of this food item is traded to other countries, where the production is low.

The main diet of nearly 65% of India's population is rice. To remove rice from it, it has to be processed. The crushing of rice is the process through which its husk and bran are separated from the grains of paddy, which gives the polished rice. It is one of the oldest professions of India and its turnover is more than 25,500 crore rupees per year.

Most of us know that rice is one of the most consumed foods on this planet and more than 50% of its human population relies on rice as its staple food item. Of the many, amazing varieties of rice used globally, one is parboiled rice. This moniker might fool you into believing that it is a pre-cooked/boiled variety, but that is just not the case.

Factually speaking, India is the largest producer and exporter of Basmati rice and one of the largest exporters of rice, in general. Rice milling is perhaps the oldest and also the biggest agro-processing industry in the country. As it was last determined, India had a turnover of more than Rs. 25,000 cr/year and had the capacity to process approximately 85,000 tonnes of paddy each year, in turn, providing the staple food item to more than 60% of its population.

As such, the rice production cycle is divided into 3 distinct stages. These are pre-planting, growth and post-production. In one of our previous blogs, we thoroughly discussed the initial stage of rice production, i.e. the pre-planting process.

Generally, rice plants take about 3 to 6 months to grow from seedlings to reach maturity, mostly varying according to the environmental conditions and undergo 3 distinct growth phases, which are vegetative, reproductive and ripening. As such, rice varieties across the world are categorized into 2 groups based on their growth duration.

This post by Nextech Agri Solutions aims to provide practical knowledge necessary for small-scale farmers entering the rice production business. Beginning with the pre-planting activities, this post will cover the rice varieties to choose from, information on seed quality, crop calendar and land preparation.