Rice as one of antioxidant source for farming family in COVID-19 pandemic: a case study from West Nusa Tenggara Indonesia

The main food consumption of farming families is an important concern during the pandemic. Farmers in West Nusa Tenggara (WNT) survive with the availability of rice to support household health and food security during the pandemic. In addition to its nutritional content, rice also contains phenolic compounds and has antioxidant activity. This study aims are to measure the frequency of rice consumption, food variety, varieties of rice consumed daily during the pandemic in WNT, as well as the antioxidant properties of several rice varieties grown in WNT. This study was conducted from September 2020 to June 2021 in East Lombok, Sumbawa and Bima Regencies, WNT Province, Indonesia using a survey approach. The data collection techniques were observation, Focus Group Discussion, recording, interviews with 74 respondents with a semi-structured questionnaire and study literature related to the nutritional content and bioactive compound of the rice. Quantitative data was tabulated to determine the frequency and average then descriptively analyzed, while qualitative data was thematically analysed. The most consumed rice varieties are seen from the production data of seed breeders in the WNT region, the phenolic content was determined using Folin–Ciocalteu, antioxidant activity was examined using DPPH assay. The result showed that the highest portion of food consumed by farmer households in WNT is rice. The most variety of rice produced by breeders is the Inpari 32 variety. There are about 97% of farmers consume rice for 3 times a day, while 3% of the remaining consume 2 times a day of rice. Food variety includes 7.9% vegetable-rice and 92.1% rice-vegetables-meat protein. The results of the analysis of antioxidant properties and phenolic content in rice is depending on the variety. The antioxidant properties of the Jeliteng, Baroma, Pamelen, Nutrizinc and Inpari 32 rice varieties were 44.85±0.51%, 9.87±1.55%, 9.96±1.22%, 9.75±1.09%, and 14.305±1.24%, respectively, while the phenolic contents were 9.76±0.09, 4.23±0.03, 4.48±0.02, 4.64± 0.07, 4.58±0.42 mg GAE/g dryrice extract, respectively. The results of this study indicate that rice has been used as one of antioxidants source for farming families during the pandemic.