The impact of two drying methods on the quality of high-moisture rice

In this experiment, freshly harvested rice was dried by natural and mechanical methods. For natural drying, paddy rice was spread on a cement floor under a shelter at a thickness of 4cm, and it was turned twice a day. At a temperature of 19.3°C and a relative humidity of 58.8%, a total of 28 days was needed to reduce the water content from 23.11 to 14.38%. For mechanical drying, the Guwang 5HXG-15B circulating dryer was used, drying temperature was set to 42°C, and it took a total of 5 hours to reduce the water content from 23.1 to 11.8%. The changes in spore count, fatty acid value, germination rate, waist burst rate, whole polished rice rate, and taste value of rice mold after drying were studied. The results showed that compared with mechanical drying, the drying rate of air-dried rice was slower, and the number of mold spores increased from 0.65×105/g to 3.05×105/g, a 3.7 times increase. The number of mold spores in dried rice was not significant. Dried rice fatty acid value of 25.1mg/100g for natural drying was higher than the value of 19.9mg/100g for mechanical drying. High temperature affected rice seed vigor: mechanically dried rice germination rate was 58.0%, far lower than the 87.5% for natural drying. The blasting rate, polished rice rate, and taste value of mechanically dried rice were 5.33%, 57.9%, and 83.7, respectively, which was 2.33%, 58.9%, and 89.3 for naturally-dried rice. The processing quality and taste quality were even worse. Therefore, the drying process of the optimized circulation dryer should be further adjusted to reduce its impact on rice processing quality and taste quality.