Nutrition potential of foxtail millet in comparison to other millets and major cereals

Abstract

Global population is burgeoning at an alarming rate and is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by the end of this century. This has led to immense pressure on global agriculture, compounded by dwindling productivity of the existing systems and acreage because of climate change, resulting in ever-increasing input costs for the cultivation of most resource-intensive cereal crops such as rice, wheat, and maize. Ironically, the most affected populations are those with least resources to mitigate the problem—those belonging to Asian and Sub-Saharan Africa. It is against this backdrop that there is an ever-increasing need for adopting cereal crops that are easy to cultivate, less resource hungry, climate resilient, and importantly, that meet the major nutritional requirement of the feeding population. Foxtail millet is a perfect cereal crop in this light and stands to help significantly global endeavors toward food security and nutrition. The present chapter provides a comparative nutritional assessment of foxtail millet with other cereal crops, summarizes the major scientific approaches currently being undertaken for its biofortification and highlights potential avenues of crop improvement using conventional breeding, genomics, and other interdisciplinary “omic” tools.