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2.3 Chemical composition of rice starch<br />

Rice starch is made up of two distinct polymers, amylose and<br />

amylopectin; 98.50% of the starch granule is α-glucans. Both amylose and<br />

amylopectin are glucose polymers linked by the α-(1,4) linkage (Takeda et al. (1993) .<br />

Amylopectin also contains 4-5% of α-(1,6) linkages, leading to a branched molecule<br />

(Cura and Krisman, 1990). The average chain length for cereal amylopectin is 20-26<br />

glucose units. The rice starch type can vary in certain genotype from regular waxy<br />

rice (0-2%), very low amylose rice (5-12 %), low amylose rice (12 – 20%), medium<br />

amylose rice (20-25%) and high amylose rice (25-33 %) (Juliano, 1992). Rice starch,<br />

as other starch, is composed of two polymeric forms of glucose: amylose and<br />

amylopectin (Figure 3). These two molecules are organized into a radically<br />

anisotropic, semi-crystalline structure in the starch granule (Lineback, 1984).<br />

Figure 3 Representative partial structures of amylose and amylopectin<br />

Source: Takeda et al. (1993)<br />

2.3.1 Rice amylose<br />

Amylose was long believed to be a linear polymer. However, in<br />

recent years it has become known that amylose contains linear and branched chains<br />

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