Crosstalk between biopolymers in rice: are we listening to all the voices?

Some sort of bias is apparent when considering interactions within and between families of biopolymers in grains. “Wheat people” love to talk about gluten proteins and how they impart special features to pasta and bread. Conversely, “rice people” love to discuss the relevance of individual starch components as determinants of the features of rice-based products. Of course, we are all aware that either biopolymer plays a role in both wheat- and rice-based foods, and that a better understanding of the interaction between the two components is crucial to development in the field, be that the addition of unusual or unorthodox components (including non-grain proteins) to established cereal foods, or the development of novel cereal-based food products and processes. This presentation will focus on recent methodological developments, that are aimed at allowing a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of how rice starch (and its own process-induced modifications) can modulate the modifications that rice proteins (and non-rice ones in enriched products) undergo under a variety of processing conditions. Conversely, the presentation also will cover the use of selective enzymatic degradation to address how processing (and process-induced structural changes in proteins) can modulate structural rearrangements in both amylose and amylopectin. Information derived from these novel approaches will be discussed within the frame provided by the many conventional approaches that are customarily used to characterize either starch or proteins, and also in terms of the possible significance of these findings to practical applications in rice and rice-products processing.