Processing of millets

Abstract

The necessity for countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to be self-sustaining in the fight against food and nutrition insecurity is of crucial importance to maintain their autonomy. Promoting indigenous, drought-tolerant crops is a potential way of mitigating the impacts of climate change and supplementing maize, whose productivity has declined due to dependency on erratic rain-fed agriculture. Millets are known for their high amount of macro- and micronutrients (such as B vitamins, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper and manganese). However, millets also contain significant amounts of anti-nutritional factors (polyphenols, enzyme inhibitors and phytates), resulting in low bioavailability of the minerals and proteins. This has led to employing a number of processing techniques during millet meal production to reduce these effects. Hence, this chapter focuses on evaluating millet processing techniques applied (e.g., soaking, dehulling, steaming, controlled germination and roasting) and their influence on the anti-nutritional factors, nutritional composition and functional properties of millet meals based on the available literature reports. This review demonstrated the importance of millet processing technologies in removing anti-nutritional factors that could reduce the bioavailability or bioaccessibility of essential nutrients.