Identification of volatile organic compounds related to the eating quality of cooked japonica rice

Eating quality (EQ) of rice has a complex nature composed of physicochemical properties. Nevertheless, breeding programs evaluating EQ through sensory test or taste-evaluation instruments have been laborious, time-consuming and inefficient. EQ is affected by both taste and aroma. However, in actual breeding programs, aroma of cooked rice has been considered the least due to lack of information. Here we identified a total of 41 volatile compounds potentially affecting the EQ of non-aromatic, cooked japonica rice, identified by GC–MS, sensory panel test, and Toyo taste-meter analyses. Partial least squares discriminant analysis demonstrated an outstanding classification effect of the identified volatile compounds on eating-quality discrimination. Several volatile compounds related to lipid oxidation and fatty acid degradation were identified to affect the EQ in japonica rice. Of them, 1-octen-3-ol, 1-ethyl-3,5-dimethylbenzene, 2,6,11-trimethyldodecane, 3-ethyloctane, 2,7,10-trimethyldodecane, methyl salicylate, 2-octanone, and heptanal were selected as important compounds. The discriminant model for the classification of the quality of cultivars was robust and accurate, an r-squared value was 0.91, a q squared value was 0.85, and an accuracy was 1.0. Overall, the results of this study characterize EQ of rice cultivars based on volatile compounds, suggesting the application of metabolite profiling data for rice breeding of high eating quality.