“…Rice germination refers to a physiological process starting from water uptake into dry grain and ending with the protrusion and elongation of embryonic growth length (EGL)both radicle (first root) and coleoptile (protective covering enveloping the shoot: first leaf) as a completed germination due to a complex biochemical process (Counce, Keisling, & Mitchell, 2000;He, Han, Yao, Shen, & Yang, 2011). "Pregermination" is considered the earlier period of rice germination and defined by a range of EGL, usually only radicle, between 0.5 and 1.0 mm for brown Japonica rice (Kayahara, 2001) and between 0.5 and 3.0 mm for paddy Indica rice (Panchan & Naivikul, 2009;Pinkaew, Thongngam, Wang, & Naivikul, 2016;Pinkaew, Wang, & Naivikul, 2017). Moreover, it was also prolonged between 3.0 and 7.0 mm of EGL for paddy Indica rice (kernel length around 10 mm) as the last stage of pregermination to be the ending with the coleoptile protrusion, which can be also classified as malted stage according to the definition of malted barley, which is generally allowed to grow the EGL to reach 2/3 and 3/4 of kernel length (DeClerck, 1957;Kupkanchanakul, Kadowaki, Kubota, & Naivikul, 2018).…”