Rice is the staple food for an estimated 3 billion people, many of whom live in low-income countries with high prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies. In these areas, sufficient nutrient-rich foods do not always accompany rice. Rice is an affordable and accessible source of food, energy and protein, and is therefore crucial for nutrition security.
Rice fortification is very similar to wheat and maize flour fortification from a regulatory, public health and nutrition perspective. However, fortifying rice kernels is very different to fortifying wheat and maize flour. Recent technological developments have enabled a more widespread adoption of rice fortification as a cost-effective and feasible solution to address micronutrient deficiencies, supported by a growing number of governments, industry leaders, NGOs, UN Agencies, donors and other stakeholders.
GAIN and PATH developed this Rice Fortification Toolkit to build capacity of rice millers in upgrading their facilities for fortified rice production and ensure quality. The Toolkit describes in detail the process to blend fortified kernels with milled, non-fortified rice to produce fortified rice. It describes the equipment required, its integration with a typical milling facility and important quality control (QC) aspects. It serves as a consolidated manual to help any fortified rice manufacturing facility to carry out effective production of high-quality fortified rice and is intended for training new employees on the fortified rice production process.