Plant · P-690

Little Millet

Panicum sumatrense

Little millet is a small-seeded annual grass, cooked like rice or ground into flour, still grown mostly at village scale in south and southeast Asia rather than as a large commodity crop. What sets it apart from its relatives is how wide a range it tolerates - it germinates anywhere from 15 to 45 C, shrugs off both drought and standing water, and matures in as little as seventy-five days, so it fits a short or interrupted growing season. It wants full sun and mildly acid to neutral, well-drained ground, and yields are modest by cereal standards, typically a few hundred kilograms per hectare.