Divergence in rice cultivars based on organoleptic qualities

Sixty rice cultivars were evaluated for their organoleptic qualities. Divergence of samples was measured by Mahalanobis D2 statistic and clustering done by Tocher’s method. For raw rice, the varieties formed six clusters while for the parboiled samples, 10 clusters could be recognized. Results of the D2 analysis revealed that among the 60 rice varieties, as much as 35 were homogeneous with respect to quality attributes such as appearance, colour, flavour, texture and taste for the preparation of boiled rice either in the raw or parboiled forms.