Nutritional Aspects, Phytochemical Composition and Potential Health Benefits of Small Millets

Small millets comprise of a group of cereals widely cultivated and consumed across the arid and semi-arid parts of the world. These cereals are highly nutritious and show excellent adaptability to various biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Nevertheless, these grains have remained largely underutilized owing to their coarse nature. With climate change and malnutrition becoming major concerns across the globe, the small millets are receiving greater attention recently. Furthermore, the increased incidence of chronic lifestyle disorders has led to an upsurge in consumer preference towards foods including the small millets with potential health-promoting attributes. The small millet grains are nutritionally rich and are good sources of protein and dietary fibre. Further, these grains are rich sources of micronutrients including minerals, viz. calcium, iron, zinc and B vitamins including thiamine, niacin, riboflavin, etc. The small millet grains are also good source of phytochemicals especially phenolic compounds with potential human health beneficial effects. In this chapter, the nutritive value, phytochemical composition and potential health promoting effects of small millets including finger, foxtail, little, proso, kodo and barnyard are presented. We have also described the impact of different processing techniques on the grain nutritional characteristics.