Put the golden rice grains into the rice cooker, add water and heat it. It takes less time to make a delicious rice... The potatoes (potatoes) that are regarded as vegetables by many families have turned into the staple food - "potato rice".

Recently, potato rice has officially started selling, which has aroused the interest of many consumers.

How do potatoes become “rice”? It is understood that "potato rice" is a rice-like starch product that uses new processing technology to convert fresh potatoes. It is mainly made of fresh potatoes, buckwheat flour, corn flour and glycerin stearate fat. Its nutritional value in dietary fiber, sodium content, potassium content, etc. is very different from that in rice and wheat.

This "staple food transformation technique" not only retains the nutritional characteristics of potatoes with high potassium and low sodium, but also achieves nutritional upgrades through coarse grain ratio: the addition of buckwheat has greatly increased the dietary fiber content, and the corn flavonoid gives it a golden appearance, which is closer to the decomposition process of coarse grains, making it an ideal choice for people who lose fat. At the same time, during the production process, the water in the potatoes is removed in a directional manner. Potatoes, which originally had a shelf life of only a few days, have obtained a storage cycle of up to one year, solving the industrial problem of fresh potatoes being perishable.

As soon as the potato rice product was launched on the market, it attracted the attention of many consumers who wanted to try it out. On some shopping platforms, the monthly order volume exceeded 10,000.

Open an e-commerce platform and search for "Potato Rice". The "Wumeng Yulin" brand potato rice produced in Zhaotong, Yunnan is the one with high attention. It is currently priced at 33.8 yuan per 950 grams.

Li Yulin, the head of Qiaojia Hongbang Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., the producer of this product, told the author that after years of screening, he finally chose to establish his own seed potato base in Qiaojia, Yunnan, with superior climate and soil conditions, and invited scientific research teams to settle in to cultivate high-yield and disease-resistant new potato varieties. At the same time, he explored and developed the potato deep processing industry, and finally chose potato rice as an innovative experimental project. "The current price is not low because the raw materials and process links of potato rice are relatively complicated." Li Yulin said that although the potato rice business is still in its infancy, in the context of upgrading of healthy diet consumption, he believes that more and more consumers will understand and try potato rice. If the market feedback is good, production capacity investment will be increased in a timely manner in the future, and the starch chain reset technology will be applied to the production of staple foods of various potato crops to achieve large-scale production and thus reduce product prices.

How do consumers view potato rice?

In the interview, many consumers recognized the innovation and nutritional value of potato rice.

After cooking and tasting potato rice myself, Mr. Long from Shaotong, Yunnan praised it: "I heard that potato rice is produced locally now. As soon as the product is on the market, I bought two bags to try it out. The ingredients of the potato rice are clean and healthy, and the cooking process is simple and convenient. It has a hint of the aroma of potatoes when it is released, and the taste is also great, which has not disappointed me!"

Wang Lin, a white-collar worker in Beijing, pays great attention to daily diet. "The taste of potato rice is slightly sticky and does not have the refreshing taste of normal rice. It is not as good as similar competitors such as brown rice and soba noodles in terms of cost performance. If eaten regularly, it is not cost-effective, but it should be a good choice as a staple food for light fat meals or daily adjustments."

Many people also hope that the price of potato rice will drop again.

"The way to eat 'potatoes turn into rice' is really novel and has a sense of technology, like future foods that appear in science fiction works. When I first heard this concept, I really had the urge to place an order." Yang Heng from Nanyang, Henan Province gave up payment due to price reasons after careful thinking. He felt that potatoes themselves are not expensive and have many ways to eat them, and daily rice is affordable enough. "If it is really a good substitute for staple food, it will definitely be popularized on the market soon, and the price may also drop. I'd better wait." Yang Heng calculated.

Potato rice enters the staple food market, giving potato growers more expectations.

Niu Ruilong, head of Inner Mongolia Pujun Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Technology Development Co., Ltd., admitted that the northern potato production areas are now facing the structural problem of "high yield and low price". Since the staple food of potatoes, the enthusiasm for potato production has increased, and the production scale and output have increased day by day. However, the consumption channels for staple food consumption have not kept up with the pace, and supply has begun to occur. After the annual supply of multi-producing areas across the country is achieved, the main southern production areas can make profits from fresh potatoes through staggered sales, while the traditional storage advantages of potatoes in the north disappear. In addition, the large planting scale and concentrated seasonal supply, if there is no channel for consumption of staple food, potatoes will be linked to the prices of vegetables such as cabbage and carrots. Their pricing is easily affected by fluctuations in the supply of vegetables, resulting in the risk of irregular unsalable sales.

"By converting fresh potatoes into storage-resistant staple foods, potato rice can not only digest the inventory of concentrated markets in northern production areas, but also hope to increase added value through staple food positioning. However, in the long run, the market pricing of potato rice must still be consistent with the prices of traditional rice and coarse grains. After all, in the minds of consumers, this is made by potatoes after all." Niu Ruilong said that if the market can accept potato rice, he will invest in time to follow up.

Zhu Zhanguo, professor at the School of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, said that in 2015, my country launched the "potato staple food strategy", and potatoes became the fourth largest staple food after rice, wheat and corn. Potato rice will help further develop the potato industry, share the supply and demand pressures of rice and wheat, and form a diversified food supply system. Potato rice can improve the efficiency of potato resource utilization through industrial processing and reduce grain loss and waste in the potato industry. "At present, potato rice is still in the 'taste' stage for consumers. In the future, with the reduction of costs and the increase in eating methods, it is expected to further enrich people's dining tables." Zhu Zhanguo said.