Analysis of Selected Varieties and Grades of Rice Moving in World Trade, in Terms of U.S. Official Rice Standards

Excerpts from the report: The Foreign Agricultural Service in 1957 began a project which represents a first step toward defining the kinds of rice that move in international trade and the kinds preferred by consumers in importing countries. Its goal is to help establish some basis for comparing the competitive position of a particular rice in a particular market. Lack of international grades in rice as well as any semblance of a worldwide international market have always made this comparison difficult. Using the U.S. Rice Standards as a measuring stick, the samples collected under the project in the rice producing and consuming countries of the world were analyzed in a two-part study. The first, reported on here, has to do with the types and quality of the rice; the second, which will be published later, concerns itself with the physical and chemical characteristics of the samples. For this study the grading analysis on all samples was performed by the rice grading service of the Agricultural Marketing Service at New Orleans, La. The laboratory testing for chemical and physical factors was divided according to their specialized research interests between the Texas Rice and Pasture Improvement Station in Beaumont, Tex., the Southern Utilization Laboratory (ARS) at New Orleans, and the Western Utilization Laboratory (ARS) at Albany, Calif. Cooking quality evaluations were made on a selected group of samples by Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md.