Cereal Chem 45:365 - 373.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Environmental Conditions and Stress Cracks in Milled Rice.

R. A. Stermer. Copyright 1968 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Research showed a relation between rate of stress-crack damage and change in equilibrium moisture content (delta EMC) of rice due to changes in temperature and relative humidity. This relation was found to be an exponential function expressed by the formula: [(rate of damage) Y = 0.950 + 0.0564 (delta EMC - 2.0)4] where the rate of damage is a weighted factor giving greatest emphasis to damage occuring in the shortest time. The accuracy of this equation in predicting damage is indicated by a multiple regression coefficient of 0.707 which is highly significant at 99% confidence level. The results also showed that (a) high-moisture rice is more susceptible to damage than low-moisture rice, and (b) rice subjected to change in relative humidity of 20% or more is subject to stress-crack development in a relatively short period of time (less than 15 min.).