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Small Millets

Small millets, big potential: diverse,nutritious and climate smart

In South Asia, lack of dietary diversity is one of the key factors behindmalnutrition and the prevalence of non‐communicable diseases suchas diabetes. Small millets, grown as a complement to existing crops,could contribute to an answer. Performing well in marginalenvironments they have superior nutritional properties, including highmicronutrient and dietary fibre content, and low glycemic index. However, there has been a drastic decline in production andconsumption of small millets mainly due to limited productivity, highdrudgery involved in their processing, negative perceptions of small millets as a food for the poor and policy neglect when compared toother crops.Realising the importance of small millets for nutrition security, DHAN Foundation with its partners Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and McGill University have been undertaking research-for-development projects to increase the production and household consumption of small millets since 2011 in two phases.

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Project Themes

Processing equipment

De-hulling is the process of removing the outer hull/husk from the grains, which are not human edible. It is a vital process for obtaining grain-rice and for further processing of grains for consumption.Small millets other than finger millet are well protected in glume encasements, hence the conversion of the grain to rice and other forms are time consuming...

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Food products

Standardized more than 40 traditional (E.g. Idli, Dosai and Murukku) and modern (Eg. Cookies, Soup sticks and Macaroni) small millet food products Lack of appealing nutritious small millet products is one of the important reasons for not being able to break the social stigma associated with the consumption of small millets (known as the grain for the poor).

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Promoting consumption

Given the large scale prevalence of under nutrition (Anaemia, protein energy malnutrition) and over nutrition (obesity), and rising levels of non-communicable diseases (diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases) and other lifestyle related health problems (constipation and other stomach related disorders), declining consumption of nutritious small

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Public policy analysis and change aimed at policy environment conducive to small millets

Inadequate policy support for small millets was an overarching issue that contributes to other production, processing, consumption and marketing related problems. To address this the project attempted the following: i) analysing the policy landscape to identify available

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From the field

On 25th of March, 2017 Conducted training ‘Livelihood Enhancement Training for Micro Food Enterprises’programFor Pull-cart street vendors in Krishnagiri. Dr.Pushparaj from FSSAI, Krishnagiri who was chief guest of that training

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