Pearl millet is reliable for food on the table

As I stood firmly staring at pretty birds chirping and partying on a strange crop species in one corner of the Source of the Nile Agricultural and Trade show ground in Jinja, a group of about 60 pupils guided by a female teacher stopped to see what I was looking at. Everyone went silent as humming birds seized our attention. Meanwhile, the crowd kept growing as more people turned up keenly to observe what was making us gather. The exhibitor in charge of the demonstration block emerged from a shed adjacent to the stand. But before he spoke a word, one of the pupils asked, “Madam, what is that crop birds are enjoying?”

“Sorghum,” a female teacher in her 40s quickly replied, making us wonder what kind of sorghum it was. Though the plot had a short signpost that carried details of the plant, none of us bothered to read it. I quickly asked the exhibitor to clarify what species of sorghum it was. To our surprise, he told us the crop was millet not sorghum, as we had earlier assumed.“This is what we call ‘pearl millet’,” Mr Okwong Doda, a research technician at Nabuin Zonal Agriculture Research and Development institute, answered.“…Oh my God!” the teacher screamed. “I convinced the first group I guided to this place that it is sorghum. Since it looks like sorghum, I thought it is a new type of sorghum,” she said, making everyone burst into laughter.

Mr Okwong explained that the crop was a recent released Pearl millet variety- ICMV 221, successfully grown in northern, some parts of eastern Uganda and West-Nile.“This is a superb crop if I can say. It is of high yields and matures faster. If it is taken up by farmers particularly those in semi-arid regions like Karamoja and other parts of the northern area, it can improve food security in the country,” a research technician said. Pearl millet is a warm season crop, appearing somewhat like sorghum. Its flowers and seeds occur in a spike at the end of the stem or tillers, looking somewhat like a cattail or bulrush head.

The crop, grown for grain has a growth habit similar to sorghum. It is well adaptive to production systems characterised by drought, low soil fertility, and high temperature. It performs well in soils with high salinity or low soil pH (acidity). Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions, it can be grown in areas where other cereal crops, such as maize or wheat, would not survive. According to Mr Okwong, pearl millet takes only 75 days to mature compared to finger millet, which takes 100-110 days. Sorghum also takes 100-110 days. The researcher says the millet has the fast growth rate and rains of just one week are enough to support the crop to harvest stage.

“Even if drought emerges after intense rains of one week, you still harvest something,” Okwong says as he stretches his hand to shoo the birds invading the garden. The only notorious pests to the crop are birds, he explains. He adds: “This millet has a yield potential of at least 3.5 tonnes per hectare, half a tonne higher than finger millet species- Seremi 1 and 2,” He also says the variety is resistant to millet pests and disease like rust, smut, ergot and stem borer especially if the field is well managed.

However, though pearl millet was domesticated as a food crop in the tropical region of East Africa at least 4,000 years ago, the crop is unpopular in Uganda compared to finger millet. The crop is only grown by few farmers in the northern part though it can also do well on fertile or well drained soils in the south and western parts of the country. According to scientists, yields of the crop are not competitive with corn or even sorghum on good, fertile soils. Pearl millet has a competitive advantage over corn and sometimes sorghum on sandier soils in moisture-limited situations. Although pearl millet was developed as a food crop and is still primarily used this way in Africa and India, its grain is most likely to be used for animal feed in the US. Several studies have been conducted on its potential for various types of animals, including poultry, ducks, cows, hogs, and catfish.