Millet might not be an ingredient in prairie recipes, but it is part of the daily diets of people elsewhere in the world. It is also a staple in many bird feeders.
Italian (Setaria italica) and Proso millet (Panicum milaceum) are major components of bird seed mixes, but are not generally grown in Saskatchewan because of their late maturity.
Saskatchewan is the world’s leading exporter of canaryseed. Building on that experience, there might be increased opportunities for a bird feed packing industry if farmers managed to grow millet in Saskatchewan.
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Pierre Hucl of the Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan has been doing his best to see if this can be done.
“Millets tend to perform well under high temperature conditions; they are physiologically similar to sorghum and corn,” Hucl said.
“Proso and Italian millet can be harvested with conventional equipment. Proso millet seems better adapted to Saskatchewan than Italian millet, which tends to be grown further south in the Great Plains. We have identified the early maturing Italian millets in the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) crop gene bank and we have tested these particular lines at contrasting sites in the province.”
Hucl and his colleagues had carried out an earlier screening study in 2001 and sought a wider environmental sample for his second project. Of the 730 millet seed samples accessed, 13 were tested for grain at four sites in 2003 and 11 at four sites in 2004.
“Averaged over six trials, the Italian millet lines yielded 50 to 70 percent more grain than the Proso millet check variety, while they were, on average, a week later maturing than the Proso millet. It should be noted that the Italian millet lines had smaller seed and lower test weights than the Proso millet check variety,” he said.
One of the main impediments to grain millet production is a lack of registered weed control products, said Hucl.
Research will be required in that area before commercial production is undertaken.
