How excited to you get about the grain you eat?
Rice is central to traditional Japanese cuisine, and many Japanese farmers and famous rice-growing regions take great pride in their produce. One family company in Fukushima Prefecture, MIINE PRIMAL Co.,Ltd., has engaged in rice farming for over a century and seeks to educate widely about farm to chopstick. This company recently combined Japanese rice love with technical analysis of rice, and began using its patent to enable “blending” of rice as coffee connoisseurs have blended for decades, but to meet specialized tastes of individual consumers.
Japan Patent No. 6364137 (Application No. JP 2018-30737) “blend rice preparation support system [ブレンド米調合支援システム]” underwent Accelerated Examination and was registered in 2018 (in about 4.5 months from filing). In effect, the invention that is claimed involves a system for selecting different amounts of a given range of rice types for a blend that fills the need for a particular kind of rice at a certain amount. The system requires qualitative analysis of harvested rice and data input into a database for each type of rice. The rice types are thus analyzed by way of four categories–sweetness, fragrance, elasticity, and stickiness. The patent system calculates the best ratio of the available rices based on those factors.[1]
MIINE PRIMAL staff started a crowd funding campaign online in order to expand their product line of customized rice this year and recently surpassed their campaign goal.[2] Japanese people can really be excited about rice and about details, as this innovative combination has shown. Even a bowl of unblended rice is a delight, if you think about how intricate the tastes are.
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Contact: Taro Yaguchi
Sources
[1] Information on Japan Patent No. 6364137 (Application No. JP 2018-30737) and English machine translation from J-Plat Pat. Accessed August 5, 2021.
[2] MIINE PRIMAL, Co. Ltd. “【特許取得】時代は「カスタム米」、自分好みのお米が見つかる！ [Patented: this is the ‘custom rice’ age, where you find your favorite rice!]” https://www.makuake.com/project/miine-primal/ Makuake. Updated July 23, 2021. Accessed August 5, 2021.
Header Image by Mamoru Masumoto from Pixabay.
