DETERMINING POSTHARVEST QUALITY OF MILLED RICE IN LAVUN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF NIGER STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

This study examined quality differences of milled rice collected from three milling stations each from Doko, Gaba, Jima and Busu all of Doko Area council in Lavun Local Government Area Of Niger state. Three milling machines per town and five rice processing womwn were selected at random for this study. Data on the percent mixture of seeds; percent unmilled paddy grains found in the samples; percent broken heads in the sample; percent inclusions (foreign materials and percent chaff contained in the milled samples) were collected. Result showed that rice mills in the study area yielded high whole grains, low foreign and burnt materials. No red rice or chalky grains were found from any of the mills sampled or from the villages. This could be an indication that red rice either no longer grows in the area or that the farmer had removed/roughed them out of the fields such that they could not grow hence found in the milled rice.