Millets (/ˈmɪlɪts/)[1] are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food.

Millets are important crops in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa, especially in India, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger, with 97% of production in developing countries.

Millets may have been consumed by humans for about 7,000 years and potentially had "a pivotal role in the rise of multi-crop agriculture and settled farming societies".

They are highly tolerant of drought and other extreme weather conditions and have a similar nutrient content to other major cereals.

In 1977, J. Brunken and colleagues classed the wild P. violaceum as part of the cultivated species P. glaucum (pearl millet).

[19] The cultivation of common millet as the earliest dry crop in East Asia has been attributed to its resistance to drought,[20] and this has been suggested to have aided its spread.

[26][27] Palaeoethnobotanists have found evidence of the cultivation of millet in the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Jeulmun pottery period (around 3500–2000 BC).

[28][29] Millet continued to be an important element in the intensive, multicropping agriculture of the Mumun pottery period (about 1500–300 BC) in Korea.

[35] Upon request by the Indian Government in 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations declared 2023 as International Year of Millets.

[37][38] Studies of isozymes suggest domestication took place north east of the Senegal River in the far west of the Sahel and tentatively around 6000 BC.

[39] Broomcorn or proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) came to Europe from East Asia as early as the 17th century BC in Vinogradnyi Sad, Ukraine.

[42][40] Pearl millet is one of the two major crops in the semiarid, impoverished, less fertile agriculture regions of Africa and southeast Asia.

[44] Millets are subject to damage by many insect pests, including corn borers, stem borers, the caterpillars of numerous moths in the families Erebidae and Noctuidae, the millet midge, many species of flies in the Muscidae, Hemipteran bugs of many families including aphids, and species of thrips, beetles, and grasshoppers.

India is the top millet producer worldwide, with 11.8 million tonnes grown annually – some 38% of the world total and nearly triple its nearest rival.

[52] In Ukraine, millet was historically a common ingredient in the diet of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, in the form of a porridge called "kulish".

This dish, primarily made with millet, served with stewed vegetables and meat, cooked in a cauldron, remains a part of modern Ukrainian cuisine.

It contains a layer of smashed millet and mungbean topped with sliced dried coconut meat wrapped in a crunchy rice cake.

Compared to forage sorghum, animals including lambs gain weight faster on millet, and it has better hay or silage potential, although it produces less dry matter.

[67] In the Sahel region, millet is estimated to account for about 35 percent of total cereal food consumption in Burkina Faso, Chad and the Gambia.