National summit on millet crops held

With an aim to educate industry stakeholders and farmers about millet crops, experts at the National Summit & Millet Gala here highlighted importance of the crop with regard to its nutrition and other aspects.
The summit was organised by Action for Social Advancement in collaboration with Biodiversity International, Rome, here recently to sensitise key stakeholders about millet crops with regard to its nutrition, climate change mitigation value, and importance for agro- biodiversity, a release issued here today said.
It was attended by participants from government, agriculture universities, NGOs, private sectors.
Village resource persons from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu, engaged in promoting millets as a source of nutrition among children, tribal population especially women and farmers, also took part in the seminar.

Nutritionist Dr Swarna Vyas during the seminar spoke about the iron deficiency and infertility problems which can be tackled with minor millets.
She further stressed on how 80 per cent of North India has wheat intolerance and that obesity can be cured by consumption of minor millets to balance metabolism.

The technical sessions during the summit raised various concerns related to the declining production area of millets, stagnating productivity and poor value chain development, the release said.
However, there has been positive signals of growing awareness and consumption of millets by the urban middle class due to its high nutritive value.

Former Agriculture Production Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh, MM Upadhyaya stressed the need of millet related research and active extension work for improved milled farming practises among the farmers.
"Millets can grow in poor quality soil and create a good plan B for food security. With the growing population and the climate change scenario food security may become an issue in the future," Dr Dayakar Rao of Indian Institute of Millet Research, Hyderabad, said.