F F T C Technology
Practical
Building a rice drying hut
E ACH YEAR, the rice crop in Vietnam is harvested
during the rainy season. The humidity at that time
is very high, and the rice grains will germinate very
easily if they are not dried quickly.
A rice drying hut helps farmers reduces yield
losses and preserves the quality of the rice. It is a low-
cost technology which is easy to apply, and well suited
to small-scale farmers.
Building the hut
Materials
To build the hut, you will need some strong bamboos or
small logs, some large transparent plastic sheets, a
nylon net, some wire and some rice husk.
Fig. 1. Building the rice drying hut
Food and Fertilizer Technology Center (FFTC)
14 Wenchow St., Taipei, Taiwan ROC
Tel.: (886 2) 2362 6239 Fax: (886 2) 2362 0478
E-mail: fftc@agnet.org Website: www.fftc.agnet.org
FFTC: An international information center for
small-scale farmers in Asia
Postharvest
PT2002-23
Building method
! The size of the hut depends on the available land
surface, but usually it will cover an area of 100 -
300 square meters, and be 5 to 10 meters long.
Prepare the floor so it is flat and smooth.
! Dig a drainage gutter around the floor. It should
be 20 - 30 cm wide, and 20 - 30 cm deep.
! Erect a row of bamboos or logs as support
columns in the middle of floor, connected at the
top by a log or bamboo as a roof beam.
The columns should be about 2 - 3 meter high,
with an extra 50 cm buried in the soil.
! Small rafters are fastened to the roof beam at one
end, with the other end of each rafter resting on
the ground. This makes a V-shaped structure.
Cooperating agency for this topic:
Department of Agriculture and Forestry Extension,
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam
Fax: (84 4) 823 6403
E-mail: ttdt@hn.vnn.vn
 " Nylon ropes are stretched over the roof beam of
the hut from one side to the other. The ropes
should be 50 - 60 cm apart.
" Plastic sheets are put over the ropes, to make a V-
shaped roof. The lower part of the roof should
be 20 - 30 cm above the ground surface, so that
water will flow easily into the gutter.
" The four corners of each plastic sheet are
fastened to a nylon rope.
" Dry rice husk is spread over the floor to a depth
of 5 - 10 cm. The nylon net is laid over the husk,
and fixed to the ground with bamboo pegs at the
edtes.
Drying the rice
The harvested rice is spread out evenly over the nylon
net. The husk beneath the net insulates the rice from
the wet ground, and gives the rice at the bottom a good
supply of dry air.
The pile of rice is 20 - 30 cm deep in the middle,
and 15 cm deep at the edges. Regularly once an hour,
the rice should be turned and piled into long ridges.
The rice will take from one to three days to dry,
depending on the weather. If the rice in the hut is still
too wet and the sun has come out, some of the plastic
Fig. 2. Spreading out the rice in the rice hut
sheets should be removed from the roof, to allow the
sunlight to enter and to get rid of some of the moisture.
Some characteristics of the rice drying hut
The temperature inside the hut is always higher than
the temperature outside it. Because the temperature
inside the hut rises gradually, there is also a gradual
loss of moisture from the rice grains, so the rice grains
seldom crack.
On sunny mornings, between 9 AM and 10 AM,
o
it is 8 C warmer inside the hut than outside it. An hour
later, the temperature difference rises to 12oC. On rainy
days, the difference is 6oC. At night, the difference is
o
1-3 C.
2
A hut measuring 10 x 10 meters (i.e. 100 m ) has
the capacity to dry 2 - 2.5 mt of rice at any one time.
Usually, the hut is used to dry several batches of rice,
one after the other.
Precautions
The hut must be protected from wind, and should stand
with one side facing the direction of the prevailing
wind. The entrance should not face into the prevailing
wind, and rain should not be able to blow into the hut.