Millet processing – principles techniques and challenges
Wednesday, May 13th 2020. 3 PM to 4 PM (Indian Std Time)
Millets, like almost all other grains, need to be processed before they can be used for human consumption. While the naked grains (Pearl, Sorghum and Finger) are most often ground into a flour, the husked millets (Foxtail, Little, Kodo, Proso, Brown top and Barnyard) are dehusked and used in their rice forms. In this session, we shall understand the basic steps and principles in cereal grain processing. We shall go into the characteristics of a few millets sufficiently enough to appreciate how their cleaning and processing would be different from that of paddy and wheat grains. The focus of the presentation shall be on some of the major challenges in processing millets and the steps we can take to overcome these when processing manually or with machines.
Anchor/Moderator: Anitha Reddy
Anitha is an Associate Director of Sahaja Samrudha, an Organic Farmers Association in Karnataka a Co-Convener of the Working Group on Millets in the RRA-Network. She has been working on issues of seed conservation, food security, livelihoods and socio-economic development of rural women. She is a founder member of a successful Producers Company – Sahaja Samrudha Organic Producer Company.
She has established an innovative, remunerative Community Marketing value chain of organic vegetables for small producers which has stood the test of time. As part of her various roles, she interacts with various grassroots groups and has faced and found ways to over come the challenges posed by processing of agricultural commodities.
Speaker: Dr. Dwiji Guru
Dwiji is a serial entrepreneur, technology developer, researcher, and advocate for sustainable food systems. Dwiji consult for and work with various stakeholders – from farmers to consumers – on dry land farming, processing, specializing in various aspects of millets spanning a broad spectrum from cultivation practices, processing, cooking to nutrition.
Participate in the webinar
Please register by filling out this form.
Please note that registration closes at 10AM of the day of the webinar, i.e. May 13th, 2020. In case you are reading this after the registration closed, you can still participate by joining us on the YouTube Livestream.
We request all registrants to please join the webinar session early. We have had an overwhelming response – 550+ registrations so far. The webinar technology platform license allows for limited attendees only. So in case you receive a message that the webinar is full, please join us through the YouTube livestream (details below). Volunteers shall be the watching the comments section of YouTube Livestream and relaying questions and comments to the moderator and speaker.
Discuss
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View Livestream, recordings
The sessions shall be Live streamed on YouTube. Please visit (and subscribe to !) the RRA network YouTube channel. Recordings of completed sessions are also posted there.
From the session
- A copy of the slides presented in the webinar
- the recording of the webinar on YouTube
- webinar in numbers
- Q & A (post session first cut)
Previous sessions in KMW 2020
- May 4th – Community centric approach – cultivation, processing, consumption
- May 7th – Cooking Characteristics & insights on millet dishes
- May 10th – Millets and Agro-bio, food, and nutritional diversity – past, present and future
The Millet Foundation 
Hi Dwiji,
I just watched a recording of session #4 and have a question. Do all husked millets have the darker brown husk, the lighter brown bran and then the whitish kernel? The reason I ask is that I have seen quite a few millet rices on the market, however they look rather white. Does this mean they have been processed to the point of losing the bran layer (intentional or unintentional), or, is the bran colour different for the various millets?
Thank you.
Tamara
(Tezpur, Assam)
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Hi Tamara,
Thank you for writing to us ! Happy to answer your questions !!
> Do all husked millets have the darker brown husk, the lighter brown bran and then the whitish kernel?
While all husked millets have a clearly identified husk, bran, germ and kernel structure, the colors (and other characteristics) of these can vary from variety to variety, not just from one millet to another. In the upcoming session on Sat. I shall be sharing about the grain characteristics and in that I shall be sharing a lot more about this. In general the inner kernel is white, except in Foxtail and Proso millets where the inner kernel is yellow in color. And in general, the bran layer has a colour, is dull and has an oily feel to it.
> Does this mean they have been processed to the point of losing the bran layer (intentional or unintentional), or, is the bran colour different for the various millets?
Unfortunately YES. 95% (if not more) of the millet rice available in the market today is the bleached (aka polished) millets. The bran layer has been removed so that the millet rice looks white and therefore is more acceptable to those used to white paddy rice. And thats why I refer to it as bleached millet (or paddy) rice – there is nothing polished about this kind of rice !
The 9th session on May 28th shall be focused on the aspect of identifying quality in the staple forms of millets and address consumer concerns. That would be a useful session to attend and/or find more information in on these topics.
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