The year 2023 has been declared by the United Nations as the “International Year of the Millets”, in line with the proposal by India, which hopes to present itself as a global hub for millets.

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu has summarised by saying, “Millets can play an important role and contribute to our collective efforts to empower smallholder farmers, achieve sustainable development, eliminate hunger, adapt to climate change, promote biodiversity, and transform agrifood systems.”

As the global agrifood systems face stiff challenges to feed an ever-growing global population, resilient cereals like Millets provide an affordable and nutritious option . Millets are a group of small-grained cereal food crops which are quite tolerant to drought and other extreme weather conditions and can be grown with low chemical inputs of fertilizers and pesticides.

The majority of millet crops are native of India and are important as....