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Hot nights to bite Basmati by GS Mudur

Warmer nights may spoil the aroma of basmati and cause the rice to become sticky when cooked, scientists have warned after a study of how climate change may affect the quality of rice.

Field experiments by scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, suggest that high temperatures could hurt the quality of rice through loss of aroma and changes in starch leading to higher stickiness.

Several previous studies have indicated that rice yields may decline in a warmer climate, but this is the first research effort in India to investigate how the quality of aromatic and non-aromatic rice might change in the future at higher temperatures.

The IARI experiments, based on three reigning basmati varieties and two popular non-aromatic rice varieties in northwestern India, also show that warmer weather will lead to an increase in the time required to cook the rice.

“As temperatures rise, we’ll see some undesirable features in rice,” said Shantha Nagarajan, a principal scientist and team member at the IARI.

The results of the experiments appear this week in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment .

In an attempt to simulate a warmer world, the scientists staggered the sowing and transplanting of rice in an IARI farm between the months of May and August. This exposed the rice to 12 different sets of temperature conditions.

The highest rice yields occurred when the minimum night temperature — the lowest temperature during a 24-hour cycle — ranged between 21 and 22 °C.

Even a small increase of 1 or 2 °C in this temperature significantly lowered yields.

Weather data suggests that India has experienced a warming of about 0.2°C every 10 years between 1970 and 2000 and 0.1 ° C since then.

Scientists have predicted that average global temperatures could rise by 1.8°C to 4°C during the 21st century.

Higher night temperatures reduced the aroma of all three basmati varieties studied.

Basmati gets its distinct fragrance from volatile compounds retained in the grains during the growth of the plants. At higher temperatures, Nagarajan said, the grains cannot retain these compounds.

Rising temperatures also lead to structural changes in starch and affect quality. At night temperatures beyond 26°C, the rice showed a decline in a compound called amylose, which translated into greater stickiness in the grains after cooking.

Warmer weather also increased the temperature at which the crystalline structure of starch in rice melts during cooking. “This rice could then take three to five minutes longer to cook,” said Nagarajan.

“This tells us that we need to focus on research to breed better varieties (that can tolerate fluctuations in temperature),” said Pramod Aggarwal, a senior scientist in the environmental division at the IARI who co-ordinated the study.

India accounts for about 60 per cent of the world’s basmati production, and nearly 80 per cent of the country’s annual basmati produce is exported — mainly to West Asia, Europe, and North America .

India’s rice exporters appear unruffled by the study’s findings. “It simulated only temperature changes — a more realistic study should simultaneously look at the effects of temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels responsible for warming,” said one exporter who refused to be named.