Introduction:

Millet is a collective term for the grain of a large number of small-seeded grasses that are grown as cereal crops. Millets grow well in arid and semi-arid environments, requiring less water than any other grain. While developing countries in Asia still produce the majority of the world's millets, Africa is becoming the hub of production. Millet production in Africa has risen 25% since the early 1970s, and its place in domestic diets there is growing steadily. All other regions of the world, however, have registered declines in total output (largely due to changes in agricultural policy in China and the former USSR which resulted in dramatic reductions in areas sown to foxtail and proso millet, respectively), and even in Africa per capita production has dropped notably.

Description:

The CGIAR focuses on two types of millet: finger millet (Eleusine coracana) and pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum). Both are annual grasses with the highly efficient C4 photosynthetic pathway that they have in common with maize, sorghum and sugarcane.

Pearl millet is a robust annual, can grow up to 4 meters in height. It has a variable number of tillers, panicle length, seed size, and color. It is usually grown as a dryland dual-purpose grain and fodder crop in semi-arid regions of Africa and India, although it is sometimes irrigated in India. Farmers also grow it in the Americas -- as a hot season forage crop on light-textured or acid soils throughout the tropical and subtropical lowlands, and, increasingly as a mulch component in no-till soybeans production on the acid soil savannahs of Latin America. Finger millet is a smaller grass, adapted to more humid growing conditions. It too is grown for its straw as well as its grain. Because it is often grown in more favorable production environments than pearl millet, its grain yields can be competitive with those of rice and other "green revolution" cereals.

Historians believe that pearl millet originated from western tropical Africa more than 3000 years ago and was then taken to East Africa. From there it spread to South Asia, where it is now the fourth most important cereal in terms of area cultivated (after rice, wheat and sorghum). Similarly, finger millet is a native of Africa that crossed the Indian Ocean to South Asia more than a thousand years ago.

Pearl millet is as tough as nails. It produces grain and fodder under very hot and dry conditions, and on soils too poor for sorghum and maize. Its combination of rapid growth rate when conditions are favorable, high temperature tolerance, and ability to extract mineral nutrition and water from even the poorest soils make it impossible to beat in the world's harshest agricultural production environments. Pearl millet can stand up to drought, heat, insects, poor soils, flash floods -- and just about anything else you can throw at it, except downy mildew. Downy mildew, a close relative of the pseudo-fungus that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840's, replaces perfectly good grains with useless tendrils. It is every pearl millet farmer's nightmare -- more so in India where plant breeders have introduced genetically uniform single-cross hybrids that make the crop especially vulnerable to epidemics of this potentially devastating disease.

Finger millet too has outstanding properties as a subsistence food crop. Its small seeds can be stored safely for many years without insect damage, which makes it a traditional component of farmers' risk avoidance strategies in drought-prone regions of Eastern Africa and South Asia. Further, its grain tastes very good and is an excellent dietary source of methionine -- an amino acid lacking in the diets of hundred of millions of the poor who live on starchy foods such as cassava, plantain, polished rice, and maize meal -- calcium, iron, and manganese. Finally, it is productive in a wide range of environments and growing conditions, from southern Karnataka state in India to the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, and throughout the middle-elevation areas of Eastern and Southern Africa. However, like pearl millet, finger millet too has a nemesis - Pyricularia blight, a very close relative of rice blast.

Statistics:

In 2004, global millet production was about 28 million tons.

Pearl millet is annually grown on more than 29 million hectares in the semi-arid tropical regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. India is the largest producer of this crop, both in terms of area (9.1 million hectares) and production (7.3 million tons), with an average productivity of 780 kg ha –1 during the last five years. As compared to the early 1980s, the pearl millet area in India declined by 26% during the last five years, but production increased by 19% owing to a 44% increase in productivity.

How Millet is Used:

Millet grain is the basic diet for farm households in the world's poorest countries and among the poorest people. In the Sahelian zone of Africa, pearl millet is the staple cereal. Millet straw is a valuable livestock feed, building material, and fuel in those farming systems. Exports and imports of millet grain are negligible suggesting low demand, and/or unreliable availability of marketable surpluses, for this commodity in world markets.

CGIAR's Work on Millet Research:

One of the CGIAR research centers, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), has the global research mandate for pearl millet. ICRISAT won the 1996 King Baudouin Award for its outstanding achievements in the development of disease-resistant, yield-increasing pearl millet cultivars in collaboration with advanced institutions and national research programs. ICRISAT scientists are developing new ways to combat downy mildew (the most important disease of pearl millet worldwide), the parasitic witchweed (Striga), and several insect pests; and to improve tolerance to drought and low soil fertility. ICRISAT scientists and their collaborators in the UK and India have developed a molecular map of pearl millet and applied molecular techniques to distinguish different races of the pathogen causing downy mildew. Multiple genes are required for resistance that is effective against the different pathogen races. ICRISAT and its collaborators have identified race-specific quantitative trait loci (QTLs) conferring resistance against several such pathotypes. The first pearl millet marker-assisted backcrossing program, transferring these resistances into agronomically elite hybrid parental lines, is nearing completion. This work should lead to more durable resistance to downy mildew -- even in visually-uniform hybrid cultivars so much demanded by Indian farmers and the global seed industry.

Sources:

FAO. FAOSTAT.

ICRISAT web site

Sorghum and Millets: Commodity and Research Environments.
ICRISAT. 1997. Annual Report 1996.ICRISAT. 1993.

The World Sorghum and Millet Economies: Facts, Trends
and Outlook.
ICRISAT and FAO. 1996.

Tempest in a Test Tube.
McGaw, E.M. 1998. ICRISAT/ DFID/CAZS.

Evolution of Crop Plants.
Simmonds, N.W. (Editor). 1976. Longman.

Technical Advisory Committee. April 1997.
CGIAR Priorities and Strategies for Resource Allocation during 1998-2000.

Lost Crops of Africa.
Vietmeyer, N.D. (Editor). 1996. Vol. 1 Grains.

National Academy Press: Washington.