Cereal Chem. 91(5):502-507The pasting properties of rice flours and reconstituted rice flours from mixing a common starch with proteins extracted from different rice cultivars at different total protein content levels were studied. Results showed that not only the total protein content but also the protein composition had an effect on the pasting properties of the rice flours. Among the different strands of rice proteins, globulin had the strongest influence on the pasting properties, followed by glutelin, whereas prolamin had the least influence. At the subunit level of the proteins, proteins with a molecular weight of 17,000, most likely from globulin, had the strongest effect on the peak viscosity of the rice flour, followed by those of 33,000. In comparison with that of the rice starch, the influence of proteins in rice was limited. The effect of interactions between the rice proteins and the starch, such as the role of starch-granule-associated proteins, was not isolated in this study, and further investigation is required to quantify this effect.Pasting properties are an important quality measure in rice cooking and its further processing. The pasting properties of nonwaxy rice flour are known to be mainly affected by the amylose content and fine amylopectin structure (Ramesh et al 1999;Iturriaga et al 2006). In 1990, however, Hamaker and Griffin reported that the viscosity of cooked rice was also affected by the protein content of the rice. Martin and Fitzgerald (2002) confirmed that, in addition to a change with the amylose content, there was also a difference in the rapid viscosity analyzer (RVA) curves between rice flour with and without proteins. This observation suggested that the pasting properties of rice flour are indeed affected by the protein content and possibly also by the composition and structure of the proteins in the rice varieties. In fact, Singh et al (2011) concluded that the changes in pasting properties were perhaps caused by the significant difference in protein content and composition. Further, Lin et al (2011) suggested that the difference in the pasting properties was controlled by some genes in the rice, although no further details were disclosed on how the genes influenced these properties.Protein content in rice varies with rice varieties, normally from 4.9 to 15% (m/m). The composition of the proteins also varies. The results of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis reported by Teshima et al (2010) indicated that the difference in globulin content could be as high as more than five times. Proteins in rice include mainly intracellular, storage, and starch-granule-associated proteins (Koziol et al 2012). Among them, storage proteins, which include albumin (2.9-9.9%), globulin (6.6-11.0%), prolamin (1.9-4.2%), and glutelin (73.6-87.0%), can be as high as 70% of the total protein content in rice (Lásztity 1995).Qualitatively, different proteins were observed to have different effects on the pasting properties of rice flours. Baxter et al (2004) reported that the addition of prolami...