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Concept
Eleusine coracana
Summary
Eleusine coracana, or finger millet, also known as ragi in India, kodo in Nepal, and kurakkan in Sri Lanka, is an annual herbaceous plant widely grown as a cereal crop in the arid and semiarid areas in Africa and Asia. It is a tetraploid and self-pollinating species probably evolved from its wild relative Eleusine africana.
Finger millet is native to the Ethiopian and Ugandan highlands. Interesting crop characteristics of finger millet are the ability to withstand cultivation at altitudes over above sea level, its high drought tolerance, and the long storage time of the grains.
Finger millet originated in East Africa (Ethiopian and Ugandan highlands). It was claimed to have been found in an Indian archaeological site dated to 1800 BCE (Late Bronze Age); however, this was subsequently demonstrated to be incorrectly identified cleaned grains of hulled millets. The oldest record of finger millet comes from an archaeological site in Africa dating to the 8th century AD.
By 1996, cultivation of finger millet in Africa was declining rapidly because of the large amount of labor it required, with farmers preferring to grow nutritionally-inferior but less labor-intensive crops such as maize, sorghum, and cassava. Such a decline was not seen in Asia, however.
Finger millet is under the genus Eleusine Gaertn.
Main cultivation areas are parts of eastern and southern Africa - particularly Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania - and parts of India and Nepal. It is also grown in southern Sudan and "as far south" in Africa as Mozambique.
Finger millet is a short-day plant with a growing optimum 12 hours of daylight for most varieties. Its main growing area ranges from 20°N to 20°S, meaning mainly the semiarid to arid tropics. Nevertheless, finger millet is found to be grown at 30°N in the Himalaya region (India and Nepal). It is generally considered as a drought-tolerant crop, but compared with other millets, such as pearl millet and sorghum, it prefers moderate rainfall ( annually).
Official source
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