January 30, 2003

Research by Queensland¹s Department of Primary Industries (QDPI) appears to be proving the potential of pearl millet to become a significant alternative to sorghum as a feed grain crop, particularly in the more marginal cropping areas of western Queensland and north west New South Wales.

Pearl millet is a staple food crop in the semi-arid tropics of Africa and India, where subsistence farmers grow locally adapted lines of it on annual rainfalls as low as 250mm and on some of the world¹s poorest soils.

With a short growing season, it is perhaps the most drought tolerant cereal crop, able to yield on stored soil moisture alone.

It prefers light, even sandy, soils and has a 80 to 100 day growing season with a wide planting window ­ September through to mid/late February in Central Queensland for instance.

It has much higher protein than sorghum, higher levels of fat and fibre, a better amino acid profile and a higher content of metabolisable energy.

Plant breeders in the United States began the process of bringing pearl millet in from the cold by adapting African and Indian germplasm to produce dwarf, grain, pearl millet varieties suited to mechanical harvesting in mechanised production systems.

Those adapted lines came to Australia in 1999, allowing Biloela based QDPI researcher Col Douglas to begin as five year evaluation of their potential here, in a project supported by growers and the Federal Government through the Grains Research & Development Corporation.

His challenge was to experiment with the US parent lines and identify which of them provide the most likely foundation for commercial varieties to be developed by seed companies for use by growers in Australia.

Mr Douglas says his work in Central Queensland has confirmed the yield potential of these modern pearl millets, up to 4t/ha while older, open pollenated millet (Katherine) grown under similar conditions stripped 3t/ha.

Meanwhile, QDPI nutritionist Danny Singh has been supported by a Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation in an evaluation of the new millet varieties as a poultry food ingredient.

"The main reason for starting the millet research with poultry was because we weren¹t going to have large quantities of grain and naturally you can do more with poultry in that situation," Dr/Mr Singh said.

"Most of our work has been with the old Katherine pearl millet variety, because there hasn¹t been enough grain from the US varieties to carry out feeding research. However the chemical analyses we have carried out on millet grain would be equally relevant to pigs and poultry.

The chemical analysis data is being used by Col Douglas to select cultivars that have good nutritional as well as agronomic characteristics.

"The good news about millet grain is that it contains 14 to 15 per cent protein ­ compared to around 10 per cent for sorghum ­ as well as higher levels of fat and fibre, a better amino acid profile and one megajoule more metabolisable energy.

"That means processors using millet in feed mixes need to add less extra protein meal, less oil and lower levels of synthetic amino acids.

"We have successfully used up to 60 per cent millet in poultry feed mixes."

Growers will have to wait a few years yet for planting seed of the new style millets. Mr Douglas has two years more research to complete before being in a position to recommend the best parent lines and hybrid varieties for Australian conditions.