10 uses of millets

Important Food and Non-food Products Prepared from Millets

10 uses of millets are cultivated in semi-arid conditions on marginal lands by small and marginal farmers and consumed throughout Asia and Africa for more than 3000 years. But, recently millets have gained huge demands in national and interna- tional markets because of their superior nutritional values along with several health benefits. There are a large number of traditional millet-based foods and beverages prepared and consumed in different parts of Asia, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia. They can be characterized into wholegrain foods, meal or flour-based foods, nonalcoholic and alcoholic beverages

Food Products from Millets

Whole Grain Foods

• Popping the grains: The popping process involves moistening the grains to 19% moisture content, tempering the grains for several hours, agitating the grains in hot sand bed (240 °C) for a few minutes. The outer pericarp is removed and the popped grains are consumed as a snack or further processed by milling, e.g., pearl millet, finger millet, and foxtail millet.
• Germinated seeds: The seeds are soaked overnight and allowed to germinate; the protein, mineral, and vitamin content increases after seed germination. The seeds are then consumed raw or cooked. Germinated seeds are advised for infants and elderly people, e.g., finger millet, little millet, and kodo millet.
• Direct cooking: Rice like product called Kichadi is prepared by cooking the whole grains, e.g., Pearl millet, Foxtail millet, Kodo millet, and Little millet.

Foods made from Flour

• Flatbreads: These are staple foods in Africa. The millet flours undergo a specialized fermentation treatment with yeast and lactic acid bacteria that yields soft leavened textured bread with acidic flavor. The two most famous flatbreads in Africa are kisra and injera that are thin, flexible wafers with a spongy texture and are relished with spicy sauce.
  
• Rotis or chapatis: These are the most well-known unfermented flatbreads made from millets and are popular staple foods of India. Rotis or chapatis resemble a soft pancake with a flexible puffed texture. They are usually served with pickles, vegetables, chutney, meat, or sauce.
  
• Dosa and Idli: These products are popular in southern parts of India, the semi- fermented millet flour is used in making dosas and idlis, that are served with sambar or chutney.
  
• Couscous: It is pasta-lik culinary prepared from semolina of millets in North Africa. The semolina is steamed and agglomerated stirred with yogurt and consumed. Usually, the couscous products are categorized based on the size of the particle of semolina used.
• Dumplings and other dough products: In India and Africa the boiled dough dumplings traditionally prepared of pearl millet flour and finger millet flour are popular. The dumplings in Africa are called dingwa and in India they are called mudde or ragi balls. In India, ponganumis is a snackfood prepared by frying steamed millet dough.
  
• Porridges: In Africa porridges are prepared from millet meals and there are an almost countless range of conventional porridges consumed throughout the world. The porridges are usually classified based on their consistency (runny to stiff), solid content of the porridge (10-30%), serving temperature (very hot to cold) and their pH ranges (Alkaline to acidic), e.g., porridges prepared from flours of foxtail millet (China), pearl millet (South Africa), finger millet (Sahel region of Africa), and little millet (India).

Alcoholic Beverages from Millets

• Opaque beers: The alcoholic beverages are popular in Africa and India. The traditional African beers are prepared by fermenting pearl millet and finger millet grains. The beers are usually greenish-brown or opaque in color with a milk-like effervescent consistency and a musty, pleasant, bitter-sour taste because of semi- suspended particles of millets, gelatinized starch, and yeast and they are not pasteurized either. They have moderately low alcohol content (up to 3%) and consumed when they are vigorously fermenting.
• Busa or Bouza: In Egypt and Turkey, a thick, pale yellow colored liquid with a characteristic acid-alcoholic aroma is manufactured by fermenting the grains of proso millet and the product is called Busa or Bouza. The alcoholic content ranges from 1% to 7% (Arici and Daglioglu 2002).
  Tella and Katikalla: The traditional opaque beers called tella and a spirit called katikalla in Ethiopia are prepared by using finger millet and teff grains as ingredients (Bultosa and Taylor 2004). Chhang or Jaanr or Jnard: In the Indian Himalayas, finger millet grains are fermented to produce a traditional alcoholic beverage called Chhang or Jaanr or Jnard. The alcohol content ranges from 3% to 8%. Notably, in the preparation of Chhang, the brewing process does not involve malting of grains.
  Sulim, Burukutu, Dolo, talla, or Pito: In West Africa, the traditional beers are made from pearl millet grains. The fermented product is filtered to form a clear but cloudy liquid called Sulim, Burukutu, Dolo, talla, or Pito. The product is sweetish in taste and fruity in aroma and the alcohol content ranges from 1% to 5%.

Non-alcoholic Beverages

There are several nonalcoholic beverages prepared and consumed throughout Africa like Oskikundu which is prepared by fermenting cooked pearl millet and malted sorghum flour popular in Namibia (Belton and Taylor 2004). Togwa is another popular product made from finger millet malt and cornmeal popular in Tanzania and Nigeria (Oi and Kitabatake 2003). Other semi-fermented traditional beverages popular in Zimbabwe are prepared from mile and finger millet flour that gives highly nutritious drinks (Mugocha et al. 2000).

Non-food Products from Millets

• Bioethanol: Several millets rich in starch are used for manufacturing bioethanol. Usually, the starch content of major millets ranges from 65% to 73% and are good candidates to be utilized in bio-industries (Shivran 2016). Research on the utilization of sorghum grains, maize grains, and sweet stemmed sorghum for large-scale production of bioethanol has been studied extensively by House et al. (2000) and Schaffert (1995). But, the investigations on the utilization of millet grains and stems for the production of bioethanol are still in infancy.
• Starch wet milling: Wet-grinding process can be used for the isolation of Starch from millet grains thus yielding ethanol as a by-product. The isolated starch from millet grains can be used as feed for animals and birds or in other industrial relevances in a similar fashion to corn starch (Munck 1995). But, the starch extracted from millets is of poor quality because of the high content of polyphe- nolic pigments in the glumes and/or pericarp that stains the starch (Beta et al. 2000).
• Biopolymer Films and Bioplastic:  Almost all the met grains contain Kafirin a prolamin storage protein that is highly hydrophobic in nature and a superior choice for the production of bioplastics (Belton et al. 2006; Duodu et al. 2003). The kafirin in combination with glycerol, polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG 400), and lactic acid as a plasticizer yields a stable bioplastic that has lower strain, higher tensile strength, and high water vapor permeability compared to commercial zein plastics from maize (Buffo et al. 1997). These bioplastics prepared from kafirin are commercially used in Africa to coat the pears to reduce stem-end shriveling, increase shelf life, and delay ripening by up to 13 days at 20 °C storage temperature.
  Bio-coatings: The pericarp of most cereals contains wax that can be used for making coatings and films. Presently the sorghum pericarp wax in combination with carnauba palm wax is used as edible coatings for candies and confections.