RICE BRAN OIL

for food use has been commercially produced in the United States by RITO since 1994. Despite its similarities to other common vegetable oils, rice bran oil offers several unique properties that make it very interesting as a specialty oil in niche markets. It has a very appealing nut-like flavor and once extracted is very stable with good fry-life. But perhaps its most notable feature is its high level of components with nutraceutical value such as gamma-oryzanol and tocotrienols. The structure of the rice kernel is illustrated in Fig.1. The bran fraction, which includes the germ or embryo in most commercial milling operations, represents only about 8% of paddy weight but contains about three-fourths of the total oil (Juliano and Bechtel, 1985; Lu and Luh, 1991). Containing about 15-20% oil (the same general range of soybeans), rice bran is commercially feasible for oil extraction.