Nutritional Composition of Seventy five Elite Germplasm of Foxtail Millet (Setaria Italica)

Millets have been important food staples in human history, particularly in Asia and Africa. Grown under traditional methods can be termed as crops of organic farming food. Each of the millets is three to five times nutritionally superior to the widely promoted rice and wheat in terms of proteins, minerals and vitamins. To document the variability for nutrition composition for the benefit of food industry seventy five diverse germplasm line of foxtail millet were analysed for their nutrition. The genotypes exhibited highly significant differences for all the nutritional parameters viz., moisture, protein, fat, crude fibre, carbohydrate, total minerals, and total energy. Large amount of variation was observed among the genotypes for protein content ranging from 8.98 to 14.37 percent with a mean value of 12.63 per cent. The overall mean value of crude fiber content was 2.07 per cent and foxtail millet genotypes ranged from 1.34 and 2.31 per cent. The mean values for total minerals ranged between 1.08 and 1.57 per cent and overall mean of total minerals was 1.3 per cent. Considerable variation was also observed for fat per cent ranging from 2.79 to 4.16 with a mean value of 3.52. As much as 40 K.cal variation was observed between the genotypes with lowest energy (DHF 9; 326 K.cal) and genotype with highest energy (GS1000; 368 K. cal). Results indicated the ample scope is available for the farmers and food industry for exploitation of nutrients for the health and therapeutic benefits of consumers, thus rice and wheat products may be substituted by these elite foxtail millet genotypes.