Plant · P-685

Pearl Millet

Cenchrus americanus

Pearl Millet is an erect annual grass reaching up to 3 m, grown across the driest and hottest cereal-growing regions on earth, from the Sahel through India and beyond. Its grain is ground into flour, bread, porridge and couscous and eaten sweet raw by children, while its forage is cut for hay and silage or grazed directly, standing in for maize at 50 to 100 percent of the ration for pigs, poultry and rabbits without hurting performance. It tolerates acid, sandy and saline ground where other cereals fail and does not produce the prussic acid that makes sorghum dangerous to graze after drought, though the plant itself can still accumulate toxic nitrate levels under the same drought stress.