Rice sheller is the process that helps in removal of hulls and bran from Paddy grains to produce polished rice. The objective of rice milling is to get whole grain rice and preserve most of the rice kernel, in their approximate original shape.
In order to improve nutritional and cooking quality of rice, a pre-treatment is given to paddy and the rice so obtained by milling the pretreated paddy is known as parboiled rice. The rice obtained from milling untreated rice is known as raw rice or white rice.
Primary milling of rice is an important activity in food grains. Rice is used in almost all parts of India. Few decades ago, rice grains were processed at family level before cooking. Today, due to Industrialization and global competitive market trend, it has emerged as one of the major industrial activity in tiny, small, medium and large scale sector to cater to the needs of increasing population. Large number of mills engaged in processing/milling of rice are spread over in almost all states across the country. Due to increasing demand the number of rice mills will continue to increase throughout the country.
Rice is a vital food material for more than half of the world population, the importance of which as food crop has been increasing with increases in population. It is estimated that the rice requirement for Kerala itself is about 7500 Tons per day where as the production within the state is grossly in adequate to meet the requirement. The productivity of paddy in Kerala State at the current level is sub optimal meeting only 15% of the requirement and the remaining 85% requirement is met from neighboring states viz Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
