During 1992-94, the average global area from which millet grain was harvested was about 38 million hectares (19 million hectares in Africa and 17 million in Asia, with much smaller areas in the Americas, Oceania, and the former USSR) yields averaged about 750 kg per hectare. Annual global production for this period was about 28 million tons, of which about 22 million tons was used each year for direct human consumption. Production statistics for the various millets are often lumped together (sometimes with sorghum) so it is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of the areas sown to individual species, but the most recent estimate suggests that about 50% of global millet grain production is pearl millet, with about 10% for finger millet. Two other millets, foxtail (Setaria italica) and proso (Panicum miliaceum) account for another 30% of global millet production, but most of this is confined to temperate regions of China and the former USSR. The remaining portion of global millet production (less than 10% of the total) is mostly spread across eight species that are individually of limited regional importance.

Millet grain is the basic diet for farm households in the world’s poorest countries and among the poorest people. In the Sahelian zone of Africa, pearl millet is the staple cereal. Millet straw is a valuable livestock feed, building material, and fuel in those farming systems. Exports and imports of millet grain are negligible suggesting low demand, and/or unreliable availability of marketable surpluses, for this commodity in world markets.

In 1997, the CGIAR investment in millet research was approximately US $7million. This represents about 2 percent of the total CGIAR commodity investment.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), has the global research mandate for pearl millet. ICRISAT won the 1996 King Baudouin Award for its outstanding achievements in the development of disease-resistant, yield-increasing pearl millet cultivars in collaboration with advanced institutions and national research programs. ICRISAT scientists are developing new ways to combat downy mildew (the most important disease of pearl millet worldwide), the parasitic witchweed (Striga), and several insect pests; and to improve tolerance to drought and low soil fertility. ICRISAT scientists and their collaborators in the UK and India have developed a molecular map of pearl millet and applied molecular techniques to distinguish different races of the pathogen causing downy mildew. Multiple genes are required for resistance that is effective against the different pathogen races. ICRISAT and its collaborators have identified race-specific quantitative trait loci (QTLs) conferring resistance against several such pathotypes. The first pearl millet marker-assisted backcrossing program, transferring these resistances into agronomically elite hybrid parental lines, is nearing completion. This work should lead to more durable resistance to downy mildew -- even in visually-uniform hybrid cultivars so much demanded by Indian farmers and the global seed industry.