Published online at www.m.elewa.org on 31 st October 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jab.v93i1.5 Houssou et al. J. Appl. Biosci. 2015 Évaluation de la productivité technique de trois matériels d'étuvage de riz paddy au Bénin 8826 Assessment of the productivity of three parboiling equipments in Benin ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate the productivity of three parboiling equipments namely: small kit (Pot + vat with parboiling capacity of 80 kg); barrel of with a capacity of 80 kg and the big kit

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... k + vat with a capacity of 300 kg). Methodology and results: The productivity of these three equipments was evaluated with respect to: labor (kg of paddy processed/person/ hour), fire wood (kg paddy processed/kg), water (kg paddy/kg/liter), investment (kg paddy/100FCFA). Thereafter, the physical quality attributes of the parboiled rice such as chalkiness, homogeneity, toughness and the colour of the parboiled rice samples were evaluated. The results indicate that the 300 kg big kit presented low labor productivity of 8.98kg compared to the two other parboiling materials. The small kit (Pot + vat of parboiling capacity 80 kg) and the barrel of a capacity 80 kg present similar productivity in relation to the labor, wood, water and investment. No significant difference is observed for water use during parboiling while using each of the tested materials. Except for the colour, the physical quality of parboiled rice obtained with each of the three materials shows no significant difference for the chalkiness, homogeneity and the toughness of the rice grains. Conclusion and application of results: Concerning the quality of parboiled rice obtained after use of these materials, the small kit or the big kit (tank + vat with a 300 kg capacity) can be recommended to the women parboilers according to their level of production. However, works of improvement are necessary on the big kit of 300kg as well as that of barrel in order to facilitate their use and to allow the processors to produce good quality parboiled rice.