High-amylose rice: Starch molecular structural features controlling cooked rice texture and preference

Cooked high-amylose rices have slower digestibility, giving nutritional benefits, but inferior eating qualities. Molecular structural mechanisms for this inferior eating quality are found here using structural analysis by size-exclusion chromatography of both the parent starch and starch leached during cooking. All commonly-accepted sensory attributes of cooked rice were characterized by a trained human panel. Hardness, with the strongest negative correlation with panelist preference, was the dominant but not sole factor determining palatability. Hardness was controlled by the amounts of medium and long amylopectin chains and amylose in the starch, and by amylose content and amount of longer amylopectin chains in the leachate. This gives knowledge and understanding of the molecular structural characteristics of starch controlling cooked-rice preference: not just high amylose but also other aspects of molecular structure. This can help rice breeders to target starch-synthesis genes to select slowly digested (healthier) rices with acceptable palatability.