The title plays with the common trope, "Is Y the new X?" However, raishan (Digitatia compacta) - a relative of fonio (D. exilis) - is apparently cultivated only in the Khasi Hills area of Meghalaya state in northeast India. It does not appear to be produced at a level that would support wider marketing.

Raishan got a prominent mention a couple of years ago in an article by author and BBC reporter Dan Saladino ("The Ancient Super Grain That Could Help Feed the World: Once headed for extinction, millet is now being recognized as a solution to global food problems," Foreign Policy, 8 Oct. 2022 https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/08/food-crisis-biodiversity-agriculture-india-millet/ ).

A 2015 webpage asking "Millets – Why Are They Languishing?" (Zizira.com. https://www.zizira.com/blogs/plants/millets-why-are-they-languishing ) has a pretty good section on "Raishan - Millet of Meghalaya." The mention of the labor intensive processing of the grains (and how that can be a deterrent to using it as food, as opposed to just as fodder) reminds of discussions about fonio processing, and how small scale hulling machines helped energize production of that grain. 

In fact, in the case of raishan, Mr. Saladino wrote that  "new technology is now helping to make millet a more appealing crop to grow." That technology is not stated, but one imagines it could be small-scale mechanization to address the processing issues.

A short academic article from half a century ago gives a good introduction (note that the species name at the time was D. cruciata, and the administrative region where it is grown was then Assam):
Singh, H. B., & Arora, R. K. (1972). Raishan (Digitaria sp.): A Minor Millet of the Khasi Hills, India. Economic Botany, 26(4), 376–380. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4253381 [NB- you can register for a free JSTOR account to read articles such as this online]

The distinction between wild and cultivated varieties of raishan is important.


Don Osborn, PhD
(East Lansing, MI, US)
North American Millets Alliance