New production marketed adding value to rice

Ramani KANGARAARACHCHI

THE Industrial Technology Institute (ITI) has developed a new rice cracker to the market in order to make rice products popular among the consumers. Senior Research Officer ITI Damitha Rajapaksha said that although the nutritious value of rice is highly taken by people internationally, in Sri Lanka the per capita consumption of rice has dropped drastically because it is not convenient to prepare food as using wheat and the ITI had introduced rice crackers as a solution to this problem.”

She said this at the launching ceremony of the new rice crackers held at the ITI Auditorium in Colombo on Thursday.

She said that a Sri Lankan person consumes 150 Kgs of grains per year out of which only 100Kgs rice. And we are self-sufficient in rice but import 950 thousand metric tons of wheat flour every year since rice is not popular. She pointed out that value addition to rice is necessary to overcome this situation. If people get used to rice our farmers will get a better income, generating new employment and new industries, she said.

Chairman CIC Agribusiness B.R.L.Fernando speaking on marketing potential for rice based products in Sri Lanka said that CIC has taken several measures to stabilise the prices of rice while moving towards value addition. An expert rice scientist has been recruited to the company and working on growing traditional paddy varieties.

He said that the yield of most traditional varieties is very poor such as 90-100 bushels per acre. Fernando said that they are planning to export traditional varieties of rice and it is necessary to get the private sector support for this as well.

Technology for preparation of rice crackers has been handed over to CIC by the Food Technology Division of ITI after ITI made a presentation on opportunities for rice-based products to the management of CIC. They have now diversified into seed paddy production and has invested in developing special rice varieties for the local and export market.

The company has produced two flavours savoury and chocolate rice crackers which is a flat crispy snack with puffed rice grains attached to each other.