Abstract: In order to determine the suitable range of quality attributes of early indica rice for processing pressed fresh rice noodles and ensure the quality stability of rice noodles, the physicochemical and pasting characteristics 40 early indica rice varieties from two major producing areas of Hubei and Jiangxi province and the quality characteristics of rice noodles processed from these rice varieties were evaluated by descriptive analysis and correlation analysis. The results showed that the variation coefficients for the majority of 15 quality indexes of rice were greater than 10%, with the highest value of 75.9% being observed for chalkiness. Grain length, the percentage of chalky grains and peak time were significantly correlated with the sensory score of rice noodles, which had a highly significant correlation with amylose content, trough viscosity, final viscosity, setback and breakdown of rice starch, showing the largest correlation coefficient of 0.579 with setback. Compared with the physicochemical indexes of rice, the pasting characteristics of rice starch were more effective at reflecting the quality of rice noodles. Analysis of the quality indexes of early indica rice by factor analysis showed that the first four common factors explained 76.264% of the total variance and two of these, namely amylose content and setback, were significantly correlated with sensory score of rice noodles with correlation coefficients were 0.539 and ?0.332, respectively. Using stepwise regression, an equation was obtained as follows: Ysensory score of rice noodle = 51.876 + 0.494xamylose content + 0.008xsetback (R2 = 0.423). Amylose content and setback were selected as the sensitive indexes to reflect the quality of rice noodles and their threshold ranges in suitable varieties for processing pressed fresh rice noodles were found to be 22.24%– 26.86% and 1 526.5–2 036.7 cP, respectively based on clustering analysis.

Key words: rice, rice noodles, sensory evaluation, physicochemical properties, raw material suitability