Government agronomists on Tuesday unveiled the nation’s first locally developed risotto rice, a hybrid produced by crossing a domestic variety with Vialone Nano, an Italian medium-grain rice.
“Hualien No. 26” was presented at a news conference after seven years of development by the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station.
Station head Yang Ta-chi (楊大吉) said his office had been working for a decade to develop new rice varieties that can be grown organically, with improved resistance to high temperatures and disease.
Photo: CNA
As one of the products of this research, Hualien No. 26 is notable as a local alternative to costly imported risotto rice varieties and has the potential to be exported to other nations in the region, Yang said.
Huang Chia-hsing (黃佳興), a researcher at the station, said Hualien No. 26 has a number of characteristics that make it ideal for cooking risotto, including a large, starchy core that makes the grains more absorbent.
The variety is relatively heavy and large, allowing the grains to maintain a firm texture when cooked, and has a high amylose content, which keeps the rice from becoming overly sticky or gluey, Huang said.
In environmental terms, the 278km it takes to transport the rice from Hualien to Taipei also has a much smaller carbon footprint than that of imported risotto rice from Italy, he said.
Aside from risotto, Hualien No. 26 is also suited to making arancini (stuffed Italian rice balls), golden fried rice, rice pudding, Japanese ochazuke (tea over rice), and can even be ground into rice flour and added to pizza dough, Huang said.
Hualien farmers working with the station grew between 2 and 3 tonnes of the new rice variety over two seasons last year, all of which was purchased by restaurants.
This year, the station plans to have about 30 hectares of the variety cultivated, with the goal of eventually pushing its price down to about NT$200 per kilogram and making it competitive with imported rice, he said.
Hsieyi and Lian Cai — two companies that signed a technology transfer agreement for the variety — said that Hualien No. 26 is already being used by restaurants, including Taipei’s Restaurant Page (頁小館), Taitung’s Sinasera 24, and Your (嶼耳) and PalioPizza in Taichung.
The rice is also being sold on e-commerce platform Taste Italy at Home (義大利廚房), Hsieyi said, though a search of the Web site on Tuesday evening showed that it was not yet available.
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