Thank you, Gary. You raise some important points. Some quick replies and additional points, if I may. 1. To be clear, the FSSAI standards document itself does not use the term "common millet," happily, 2. Regarding the FSSAI Vikaspedia page you refer to, and the use of "common millet," I see that the table in which it appears lists several sources, including USDA. My impression is that the term "common millet," which as we know has been and is applied variously (to the point of confusion), is more frequently encountered in North America and West Europe (I think it is more often applied these days to proso than other millets, but agree that it is not helpful to use this term in statistics, lists of ingredients, or especially standards). 3. Vikaspedia is uneven, which is a common challenge for small wikis without either a dedicated editorial team or a large number of potential contributors. I saw pages on some millets (but not others) which are generally good or very good in detail on regions of cultivation, varieties, and other aspects of production. See 3.1 "Pearl millet" https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.2 "Foxtail millet" https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.3 "Barnyard millet" (E. frumentacea) https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.4 "Proso millet" https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.5 "Little millet" https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.6 "Kodo millet" https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.7 "Ragi" (finger millet) https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/pa... 3.8 Some other specialized pages on some millets such as specific agronomic topics and recipes 4. I agree fully wrt grouping the botanically distant pseudo-cereals amaranth and buckwheat with the millets. This is a practice that appears to be particular to some sources in India. When saving images of some charts, I kept a few that referred to these two crops as "pseudo-millets" in a separate section of the "Millets in charts & diagrams" collection at https://www.pinterest.com/drdonosborn/millets-in-charts-diagrams/ 5. The "small millets" title I understand to have been chosen to replace "minor millets" (basically all the hulled millets), due to the potential interpretation of the latter as "unimportant." This category is of course in opposition to the "major millets," which I learned years ago as sorghum and pearl millet, but which sometimes now also has finger millet (basically millets without hard husks). This division, like many simple dichotomies, has its issues. 6. Looking back at the Proso Millet Grain Standards, which you put together - https://milletsalliance.org/proso-millet-grain-standards/ - and comparing with the 8 parameters for millets in the FSSAI standards, the former is more detailed, in several respects, and the latter has at least one specification that I hadn' t seen before (uric acid). It would be interesting to know any evaluation you may like to offer of these differences, All the best, Don DO, EL, MI, US NAMA On Tue, Sep 15, 2026 at 1:06 PM Gary Wietgrefe <gww374@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Don for India's grain standards including millets. As I have done with USDA, I do take issue with millet nomenclature regarding "common millet" as listed in chart of https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/crop-production/nu... .
Besides "common millet" the table lists "China." Likely, it is a typo meaning to be "chia."
Which common millet are they referring to? Presumably proso since other millets are listed. However, description text of millets below the table states, "Sorghum and Pearl millet are the two most *common* millets." The statement goes on to list various millets including proso as "small millets." *Nationally and internationally we must get away from using the term "common millet" because "common millet" has no legal or Latin definition*.
I agree that countries need to have independent grain standards as NAMA has introduced for proso. Using FAO's 1962 (and modified) CODEX seems reasonable to use as a starting point. *India's inclusion of broadleaf crops like buckwheat and amaranth in the list as a pseudo-millets is not only crazy but confuses and distracts from the benefits of true millets*....Gary Wietgrefe
On Tue, Sep 15, 2026 at 9:58 AM Don Osborn via Collab < collab@lists.millets2023.space> wrote:
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) amended its Food Safety Standards in 2023 to include all millets in one "comprehensive group standard for 15 types of millets specifying 8 quality parameters" (NB, that's 13 millets including sorghum, plus two pseudo-cereals).
NAMA sees the vital importance of millets standards for producers, processors, and consumers, and has, of course, promoted a set of Grain Quality Standards for proso millet. So, it would seem useful to review the standards adopted by India, as the largest producer of a variety of millets, and exporter of many of those. Could these inform the future development and expansion of standards for grain millets in the US and other countries of North America?
* Press release about the standard(s) for millets https://fssai.gov.in/docs/latest/press/63f84b536542dPress_release.pdf (not dated, but from text probably 1 Sep. 2023) Notes: A. The link in this release goes to an older document about millets, which is not dedicated to standards B. The following are mentioned (NB- the pseudo-cereals amaranth and buckwheat are included, and sometimes termed "pseudo-millets." Also, the "crab finger" would be Digitaria sanguinalis.): 1. Amaranthus (Chaulai or Rajgira) 2. Barnyard Millet (Samakechawal or Sanwa or Jhangora) 3. Brown top (Korale) 4. Buckwheat (Kuttu) 5. Crab finger (Sikiya) 6. Finger Millet (Ragi or Mandua) 7. Fonio (Acha) 8. Foxtail Millet (Kangni or Kakun) 9. Job's tears (Adlay) 10. Kodo Millet (Kodo) 11. Little Millet (Kutki) 12. Pearl Millet (Bajra) 13. Proso Millet (Cheena) 14. Sorghum (Jowar) 15. Teff (Lovegrass) C. It's not clear that either fonio or teff are grown in India, so the standards presumably apply to imports as well as to domestically produced millets.
* Article entitled "FSSAI specifies comprehensive group standard for millets" on FSSAI's Vikaspedia wiki (35/2/2024)
https://en.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/post-harvest-technologies/e... Note: D. This contains much the same content as the above, with an outlink to the document summarized below.
* Edited version of Chapter 2. Food Product Standards. 2.4 Cereals and Cereal Products in "Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations"
https://www.fssai.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/5_%20Chapter%202_4%20(Cere... Notes: E. This document shows edits to this chapter-section that went into effect on 1 Sep. 2023. Deleted parts are highlighted yellow, and notes are in red. The black, unhighlighted text should be taken as final F. The full "Food Safety and Standards ..." dates back some years, and has been amended at various times. I could not access a current version of it in its entirety, or of an unedited (i.e., uncluttered) one of this chapter-section. G. In this document, the full list of 15 grains and seeds listed above is included in the table on page 25 (there is no pagination, so use the page indicator in your PDF viewer). However, due to a formatting error, the last two (sorgum and teff) are hidden. A search on "teff," for example, will take you to a spot below the table. H. The eight parameters in the millets standard (which applies to all types of millets, as well as the two of the three pseudo-cereals [the third pseudo-cereal, quinoa, is treated separately]) appear on the following page (26) and are: 1. Moisture Content 2. Extraneous Matter 3. Other edible grain 4. Grains with serious defects 5. Grains with slight defects 6. Weevilled Grains 7. Immature and Shrivelled grains 8. Uric acid
If you have further information on these standards, or thoughts about them, please let us know.
Don
Don Osborn, PhD (East Lansing, MI, US) North American Millets Alliance
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