Where does Pearl millet come from?
Pearl millet comes from the southern edge of the Sahara, in what is now northern Mali, where farmers domesticated it more than 4,000 years ago. It is the oldest African cereal in the archaeological record, and it grows where maize or wheat would not survive.
From wild grass to grain
In northern Mali people were already gathering wild pearl millet in the fifth millennium BC, when the Sahara was wetter and dotted with lakes. They mixed its chaff into their pottery clay, and the imprints show the grains growing larger over the centuries. By the middle of the third millennium BC they show clear signs of domestication, such as seed heads that no longer shattered. A 2018 genome study traced all cultivated pearl millet, from West Africa to India, to a single wild population.
Across Africa and the sea
As the Sahara dried, the crop spread. It reached the Hodh depression of Mauritania and the Lower Tilemsi Valley in Mali toward the end of the third millennium BC, and northern Ghana and the Lake Chad region by the first half of the second. Domesticated forms reached eastern Sudan by about 1850 BC, and India, probably by sea, in the second millennium BC; exactly how it got there is still unknown.
Why people say India
Today India grows more pearl millet than any other country, and Rajasthan grows the most of any Indian state. Known as bajra in the north, sajje in Karnataka and kambu in Tamil Nadu, it is made into flatbreads and porridges. Africa, where it began, is the second-largest producer, and the grain is a staple in northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Worldwide, pearl millet makes up about half of all millet grown.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ↗ · nature.com ↗
