millet

millet, common name for several species of grasses cultivated mainly for cereals in the Eastern Hemisphere and for forage and hay in North America. The principal varieties are the foxtail, pearl, and barnyard millets and the proso millet, called also broomcorn millet and hog millet. Much millet is grown in China, India, Manchuria, the USSR, and Africa. Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) comprises 90% of the millets grown in the United States. Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) is the chief cereal in parts of Asia and Africa; in the United States it is used for feeding poultry and cage birds. Millet seeds or grain have served man and domestic animals as food (e.g., groats) since ancient times. The plant is known to have been grown by the lake dwellers of Switzerland in the Stone Age, and it was sown by the Chinese in religious ceremonies as early as 2700 B.C. Millets are classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Liliopsida, order Cyperales, family Gramineae.

---

millet

Any of various grasses (family Poaceae, or Gramineae), that produce small edible seeds used as forage crops and as food cereals. Most millets range in height from 1 to 4 ft (0.3 to 1.3 m). Except for pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum, or P. americanum), seeds remain enclosed in hulls after threshing. Cultivated in China since at least the 3rd millennium BC, millets are today an important food staple in much of Asia, Russia, and western Africa. High in carbohydrates, they are somewhat strong in taste and cannot be made into leavened bread, so they are consumed mainly in flatbreads and porridges or prepared and eaten much like rice. In the U.S. and western Europe they are used chiefly for pasture or to produce hay.

---

millet

Turkish term referring to an autonomous religious community under the Ottoman Empire (c. 1300–1923). Each millet was responsible to the central government for obligations such as taxes and internal security and also had responsibility for social and administrative functions not provided by the state. Beginning in 1856, a series of secular legal reforms known as the Tanzimat (“Reorganization”) eroded much of their administrative autonomy.