GREAT MILLETS/SORGHUM

                                                         Great Millets/Sorgh

GREAT MILLETS/SORGHUM

GREAT MILLETS/SORGHUM

Great millets/sorgh

(Telugu: Jonna)

Sorghum is sweet, sour and bitter in taste. This is widely cultivated in India. This millet is widely used as food in Rayalaseema and Telangana for past centuries. They also find a variety of other sorghum health benefits, even for people without gluten intolerance sorghum has high nutritional value, with high levels of unsaturated fats, protein fibred and minerals like phosphorus, potassium calcium and iron .it also has more antioxidants.

Wonderful food for diabetic, obesity and for constipation.

Controls sugar levels in blood and improves bone strength.

Sorghum's nutritional profile includes several minerals. This mineral matter is unevenly distributed and is more concentrated in the germ and the seed coat. In milled sorghum flours, minerals such as phosphorus, iron, zinc and copper decreased with lower extraction rates. Similarly, pearling the grain to remove the fibrous seed coat resulted in considerable reductions in the mineral contents of sorghum. The presence of antinutrition factors such as tannins in sorghum reduces its mineral availability as food. It is important to process and prepare sorghum properly to improve its nutrition value.

Sorghum is a good source of B-complex vitamins. Some varieties of sorghum contain β-carotene which can be converted to vitamin A by the human body; given the photosensitive nature of carotenes and variability due to environmental factors, scientists claim sorghum is likely to be of little importance as a dietary source of vitamin A precursor. Some fat-soluble vitamins, namely D, E and K, have also been found in sorghum grain in detectable, but insufficient, quantities. Sorghum as it is generally consumed is not a source of vitamin C.

Sorghum has been, for centuries, one of the most important staple foods for millions of poor rural people in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa. For some impoverished regions of the world, sorghum remains a principal source of energy, protein, vitamins and minerals. Sorghum grows in harsh environments where other crops do not grow well, just like other staple foods, such as cassava, that are common in impoverished regions of the world. It is usually grown without application of any fertilizers or other inputs by a multitude of small-holder farmers in many countries.

Grain sorghum is the third most important cereal crop grown in the United States and the fifth most important cereal crop grown in the world. In 2010, Nigeria was the world's largest producer of grain sorghum, followed by the United States and India. In developed countries, and increasingly in developing countries such as India, the predominant use of sorghum is as fodder for poultry and cattle. Leading exporters in 2010 were the United States, Australia and Argentina; Mexico was the largest importer of sorghum.