What Sona Masoori is, and what you are probably getting

The Agricultural Research Station at Bapatla in Andhra Pradesh bred both of the varieties that matter here, and its own published record is the cleanest way to see the problem:

Look at the two area figures. Eighty thousand acres is roughly thirty-two thousand hectares. That is not a supply base for a global retail trade spanning the United States, the Gulf, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Singapore. BPT 5204, at over a million hectares, obviously is.

The grain: it is not long grain, and the two Codex tests disagree

Peer-reviewed measurements of Samba Mahsuri give the following for the milled grain:

Now apply Codex Standard 198, which offers alternative classification options:

So the same rice is short grain on one Codex option and medium grain on the other, and long grain on neither. The commercial convention is to call it medium grain, and the ratio supports that, so it is a defensible description. But two practical consequences follow:

• State which Codex option your contract uses. If a contract says “medium grain per Codex” without naming the option, and the buyer’s lab measures length while the seller measured ratio, both parties are right and the shipment is in dispute.
• Never let it be described as long grain. It fails both tests for that, by a wide margin on length. A label or a tender response that calls it long grain is wrong on the face of the standard.

How it behaves in the pot

The measurements above explain the eating quality that made the variety famous, and they are more useful than any adjective:

• Amylose 24.01 percent — intermediate, at the top of the band. FAO classifies milled rice as intermediate from 20.1 to 25.0 percent and high above 25.0. Intermediate and high amylose rices cook firm and fluffy with grains that stay separate, which is exactly what this rice is bought for.
• Alkali spreading value 1, which indicates a high gelatinisation temperature. That means it needs more water and a longer cook than an intermediate-GT rice such as IR64, and in exchange it is harder to turn to mush. Buyers moving from a long-grain intermediate-GT rice to Sona Masoori and keeping their old water ratio will get an undercooked result and blame the rice.
• Elongation ratio 1.73, with kernel length rising from 4.17 mm to 7.10 mm on cooking. It lengthens substantially for a grain of its size.
• Gel consistency 42.5 mm, at the firm end of medium, consistent with a grain that holds its structure and does not go sticky.

One caveat, as always: these figures come from measurements of the wild-type variety in a controlled study. Amylose in particular varies with growing environment, season and analytical method. If your process depends on it, ask for a measured value on the shipped lot rather than relying on a published average.

The low-starch and diabetic claim, tested

Sona Masoori is very widely marketed as a low-starch, low-calorie or diabetic-friendly rice. We sell this rice and we are telling you that claim does not hold.

There is no such thing as low-starch white rice. FAO gives the starch content of milled rice as about 90 percent of dry matter. A 2025 review in the journal Foods puts white rice starch at 70 to 80 percent and describes rice plainly as rich in starch, noting that this is precisely why rice tends to sit high on the glycaemic scale. Milling removes bran and germ; it does not remove starch, it concentrates it.

And the glycaemic index has been measured for this exact variety. The same review reports values for the Indian variety Bapatla BPT-5204 at different degrees of polishing:

The standard thresholds are low below 55, medium 56 to 69, and high 70 or more. Polished Sona Masoori is a high glycaemic index food, and the more thoroughly it is polished the higher it goes. Its intermediate amylose of about 24 percent is consistent with that: in a group of twenty Indian varieties with amylose from 21.7 to 24.73 percent, measured GI ranged from 56 to 69 — medium at best, and that was before the heavy polishing that retail Sona Masoori typically receives.

Where Sona Masoori actually goes

This is a diaspora retail trade, and it looks almost nothing like the bulk non-basmati map.

Compare that with India’s top five non-basmati destinations in 2025-26, which APEDA gives as Benin at 11.5 percent, Bangladesh at 9.3 percent, Guinea at 6.6 percent, Togo at 6.6 percent and Côte d’Ivoire at 5.4 percent of 15.01 million MT. Those are bulk staple markets buying parboiled and raw white long grain in 50 kg sacks against tenders. Sona Masoori is sold in printed 10 lb and 20 lb bags in Indian grocery stores in New Jersey, Dubai, Wembley and Mississauga. **The two trades share an HS code and almost nothing else.**

The United States, the tariff arc, and a disclosure about pricing

The United States is the single most important Sona Masoori market, so its tariff history matters more here than for any other rice in our range.

The Indian Rice Exporters Federation notes that this restores rough parity with Thailand and Pakistan at around 19 percent. India’s rice exports to the United States were put at about US$391 million for the last financial year by the federation, against roughly US$1.2 billion the United States imports from other origins, mainly Thailand and Pakistan.

Two things a buyer should take from this rather than the headline.

The forms Sona Masoori is sold in

Note the interaction between the last two rows and the health section. The segment most likely to ask for a low-GI product is the same segment most likely to accept brown rice, and brown is the form that genuinely delivers a lower number. That is a real product opportunity, honestly described.

Packing: private labelling from 1 kg to 50 kg, and bulk shipments

RNG Agro Exports provides private labelling from 1 kg pack size to 50 kg pack size, and we do bulk shipments as well. This matters more for Sona Masoori than for any other rice we handle, because it is fundamentally a retail product — most of it reaches the consumer in a printed bag carrying somebody’s brand, not as an anonymous commodity.

Private label work covers artwork and printing, language versions, nutrition and ingredient panels, barcodes, and country-specific labelling requirements — which for this product differ sharply between a US pack, a Gulf pack and a UK or EU pack, and which include rules on exactly the kind of health claim discussed above. Tell us the destination market and the channel when you enquire. A 1 kg retail bag and a 50 kg woven sack are not the same product in two sizes: moisture tolerance, barrier, pallet configuration and shelf-life declaration all differ, and so does the price.

Specification: what should be in the contract

Arsenic, EU border controls and Indian policy risk

Arsenic

Under Regulation (EU) 2023/465 amending Regulation (EU) 2023/915, the maximum levels for inorganic arsenic are 0.15 mg/kg for non-parboiled milled rice, 0.25 mg/kg for parboiled and husked rice, 0.25 for rice flour, 0.30 for rice wafers, cakes and flakes, 0.10 mg/kg for rice destined for infant and young-child food, and 0.030 for rice-based drinks. Cadmium is separately limited at 0.15 mg/kg on a row including rice.

The parboiled allowance being higher is not leniency. Inorganic arsenic concentrates in the bran; milling strips the bran and takes much of the arsenic with it, while husked rice keeps it and parboiling drives some inward before milling. The limit is higher because the material carries more. This bears directly on the health section above: the two forms that lower the glycaemic index, brown and parboiled, are the two that carry more arsenic. If you are building a better-for-you line on this rice, specify both numbers.

Border controls

Rice from India is listed under CN 1006 in Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 for pesticide residues at a 10 percent control rate, verified against the India entries as amended by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1206, in force from 30 June 2026. Annex I means a higher frequency of identity and physical checks and nothing more — no origin-country certificate, no pre-shipment official analysis, no four-month certificate validity. That is Annex II, which covers turmeric, cumin, peanuts, sesame and a long list of spices. Rice is not in it. A forwarder telling you Indian rice needs the full Annex II pack is applying the spice rules to a cereal.

Indian export policy

India changed its rice export rules five times in roughly thirty months between September 2022 and March 2025, ending with the broken-rice ban lifted on 7 March 2025. Everything is open now. The honest sentence is that Indian export policy is a major risk in buying Indian rice and neither of us controls it — so price volatility in, keep a second origin qualified where you can, and write force majeure and act-of-government clauses that address export prohibition explicitly. For Sona Masoori specifically there is no second origin worth the name, which makes the contract wording more important rather than less.

If you want it organic

Certified organic Sona Masoori adds three documentation layers: NPOP certification overseen by APEDA with the TraceNet transaction certificate covering your lot rather than the site certificate, verified with the certifying body directly rather than accepted as a scanned PDF; a Certificate of Inspection in TRACES NT under Regulation (EU) 2018/848 for the EU, in addition to the Annex I check rate rather than instead of it; and a NOP Import Certificate for the United States, mandatory for every organic consignment since 19 March 2024 under the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule, existing before departure and matching the consignment.

The usual warning applies: organic is not an analytical zero, and organic certification governs what may be applied, not what may be detected. Two points specific to this page. Organic does nothing for arsenic, which comes from soil and irrigation water rather than an applied input. And organic does nothing for glycaemic index — an organic certificate says nothing about starch, polishing or blood glucose, and combining the two claims on one bag is the most common way this product gets mislabelled.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sona Masoori actually a single variety?

In the export trade it functions as a market class rather than as one variety, and the arithmetic makes that unavoidable. The Agricultural Research Station at Bapatla, which bred both varieties, records BPT 3291, called Sona Mahsuri, with parentage Sona/Mahsuri, released in 1982, 135 to 140 days duration, and grown on about 80,000 acres. The same station records BPT 5204, called Samba Mahsuri, with parentage GEB 24/TN 1/Mahsuri, released in 1986, 140 to 145 days, medium slender grain with excellent cooking quality, grown on more than 10 lakh hectares, which is about 25 percent of the total paddy area of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Eighty thousand acres cannot supply a global trade. So the overwhelming majority of rice sold internationally as Sona Masoori is BPT 5204 or a comparable medium-slender South Indian variety, not BPT 3291. We also found no Geographical Indication protecting the name, unlike Basmati, so nothing restricts its commercial use. For most buyers this is not a defect, because the eating quality of BPT 5204 is the quality the market actually wants. It matters only if you assumed you were buying a specific pedigree.

Is Sona Masoori a long grain rice?

No, and the two Codex measures do not even agree with each other, which is worth knowing before you write a label. Peer-reviewed measurements of Samba Mahsuri give a milled kernel length of 4.17 mm, a breadth of 1.40 mm and a length-to-width ratio of 2.78, with kernel length after cooking of 7.10 mm and an elongation ratio of 1.73. Codex Standard 198 offers alternative classifications. By kernel length, long grain is 6.6 mm or more, medium grain is 6.2 mm up to 6.6 mm, and short grain is under 6.2 mm, so 4.17 mm falls in short grain. By length-to-width ratio for milled rice, long grain is 3.0 or more, medium grain is 2.0 to 2.9 and short grain is 1.9 or less, so 2.78 falls in medium grain. The rice is therefore short grain on one Codex option and medium grain on the other, and long grain on neither. Describe it as medium grain if you wish, since that is the commercial convention and the ratio supports it, but state which Codex option your contract uses and never describe it as long grain.

Is Sona Masoori low in starch or good for diabetics?

No on both counts, and we would rather lose the sale than repeat the claim. There is no such thing as low-starch white rice: FAO gives the starch content of milled rice as about 90 percent of dry matter, and a 2025 review in the journal Foods puts white rice starch at 70 to 80 percent and describes rice as rich in starch. On glycaemic index, that same review reports measured values for the Indian variety Bapatla BPT-5204 specifically: brown rice 57.6, rice polished to 2.3 percent 73, and rice polished to 9.7 percent 79.6. Against the standard thresholds, where low is under 55, medium is 56 to 69 and high is 70 or more, polished Sona Masoori is a high glycaemic index food. Its measured amylose of about 24 percent is intermediate, which is consistent with that result rather than with a low-GI claim. If a buyer genuinely needs a lower glycaemic response, the honest levers are leaving the bran on, since brown measured 57.6, or parboiling, where one cited study reports an average of 53.9, and both change the product. Anyone selling polished Sona Masoori as diabetic-friendly is making a claim the published measurements do not support.

Where does Indian Sona Masoori actually go?

To the South Indian diaspora, which makes it a very different trade from bulk non-basmati. The United States is the single largest market and was the world’s third largest rice importer in 2025 at about US$1.64 billion, up 1.4 percent. India’s rice exports to the United States reached 326,400 metric tons in January to November 2025, up from 288,363 metric tons a year earlier, roughly 13 percent higher, on APEDA data. The Gulf is the strongest non-English market, with the United Arab Emirates ninth in the world at about US$784 million and growing 21.3 percent. Then come the United Kingdom at about US$681 million, Canada at about US$493 million and up 7.3 percent, Singapore at about US$337 million and Australia at about US$262 million. Note how little this resembles the bulk non-basmati map, where Benin, Bangladesh, Guinea, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire are the top five destinations. Sona Masoori is a branded retail product sold in consumer bags to people who grew up eating it, not a tendered commodity.

What pack sizes and private label options do you offer?

RNG Agro Exports provides private labelling from 1 kg pack size to 50 kg pack size, and we do bulk shipments as well. This matters more for Sona Masoori than for most rice, because it is a retail product: the great majority of it reaches the end consumer in a printed consumer bag rather than as a bulk commodity. In practice we cover 1 kg to 5 kg consumer packs for supermarket and diaspora grocery retail and e-commerce; 10 kg to 25 kg packs, which are the backbone of diaspora grocery where households buy a month or a season at a time; 50 kg bags for wholesale, foodservice and institutional supply; and bulk or containerised shipments for traders and repackers applying their own brand at destination. Private label work covers artwork, language versions, nutrition and ingredient panels, barcodes and country-specific labelling requirements. Tell us the destination market and the channel when you enquire, because the pack format changes the specification: moisture tolerance, barrier film, pallet configuration and shelf-life declaration are not the same for a 1 kg retail bag as for a 50 kg woven sack.

• In the export trade it functions as a market class rather than as one variety, and the arithmetic makes that unavoidable. The Agricultural Research Station at Bapatla, which bred both varieties, records BPT 3291, called Sona Mahsuri, with parentage Sona/Mahsuri, released in 1982, 135 to 140 days duration, and grown on about 80,000 acres. The same station records BPT 5204, called Samba Mahsuri, with parentage GEB 24/TN 1/Mahsuri, released in 1986, 140 to 145 days, medium slender grain with excellent cooking quality, grown on more than 10 lakh hectares, which is about 25 percent of the total paddy area of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Eighty thousand acres cannot supply a global trade. So the overwhelming majority of rice sold internationally as Sona Masoori is BPT 5204 or a comparable medium-slender South Indian variety, not BPT 3291. We also found no Geographical Indication protecting the name, unlike Basmati, so nothing restricts its commercial use. For most buyers this is not a defect, because the eating quality of BPT 5204 is the quality the market actually wants. It matters only if you assumed you were buying a specific pedigree.
• No, and the two Codex measures do not even agree with each other, which is worth knowing before you write a label. Peer-reviewed measurements of Samba Mahsuri give a milled kernel length of 4.17 mm, a breadth of 1.40 mm and a length-to-width ratio of 2.78, with kernel length after cooking of 7.10 mm and an elongation ratio of 1.73. Codex Standard 198 offers alternative classifications. By kernel length, long grain is 6.6 mm or more, medium grain is 6.2 mm up to 6.6 mm, and short grain is under 6.2 mm, so 4.17 mm falls in short grain. By length-to-width ratio for milled rice, long grain is 3.0 or more, medium grain is 2.0 to 2.9 and short grain is 1.9 or less, so 2.78 falls in medium grain. The rice is therefore short grain on one Codex option and medium grain on the other, and long grain on neither. Describe it as medium grain if you wish, since that is the commercial convention and the ratio supports it, but state which Codex option your contract uses and never describe it as long grain.
• No on both counts, and we would rather lose the sale than repeat the claim. There is no such thing as low-starch white rice: FAO gives the starch content of milled rice as about 90 percent of dry matter, and a 2025 review in the journal Foods puts white rice starch at 70 to 80 percent and describes rice as rich in starch. On glycaemic index, that same review reports measured values for the Indian variety Bapatla BPT-5204 specifically: brown rice 57.6, rice polished to 2.3 percent 73, and rice polished to 9.7 percent 79.6. Against the standard thresholds, where low is under 55, medium is 56 to 69 and high is 70 or more, polished Sona Masoori is a high glycaemic index food. Its measured amylose of about 24 percent is intermediate, which is consistent with that result rather than with a low-GI claim. If a buyer genuinely needs a lower glycaemic response, the honest levers are leaving the bran on, since brown measured 57.6, or parboiling, where one cited study reports an average of 53.9, and both change the product. Anyone selling polished Sona Masoori as diabetic-friendly is making a claim the published measurements do not support.
• To the South Indian diaspora, which makes it a very different trade from bulk non-basmati. The United States is the single largest market and was the world’s third largest rice importer in 2025 at about US$1.64 billion, up 1.4 percent. India’s rice exports to the United States reached 326,400 metric tons in January to November 2025, up from 288,363 metric tons a year earlier, roughly 13 percent higher, on APEDA data. The Gulf is the strongest non-English market, with the United Arab Emirates ninth in the world at about US$784 million and growing 21.3 percent. Then come the United Kingdom at about US$681 million, Canada at about US$493 million and up 7.3 percent, Singapore at about US$337 million and Australia at about US$262 million. Note how little this resembles the bulk non-basmati map, where Benin, Bangladesh, Guinea, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire are the top five destinations. Sona Masoori is a branded retail product sold in consumer bags to people who grew up eating it, not a tendered commodity.

The honest conclusion, which costs us a selling point. In the export trade, “Sona Masoori” functions as a market class rather than as the variety BPT 3291. The overwhelming majority of it is BPT 5204 Samba Mahsuri or a comparable medium-slender South Indian variety selected to match the same eating quality. We also found no Geographical Indication protecting the name, unlike Basmati, which has both GI protection and a statutory definition — so nothing restricts who may put “Sona Masoori” on a bag. Bapatla’s own record even lists a successor, BPT 2411 (Sasya), recommended in place of BPT 3291 in some areas, which tells you which direction the acreage is going. For almost every buyer this is not a defect: BPT 5204’s eating quality is what the market wants, and the station itself calls it excellent and notes it earns a premium. It only matters if you believed you were buying a specific pedigree, or if your contract or your pack makes a varietal claim you would have to defend. If it does, say so and we will tell you precisely what we can and cannot evidence.