Kansas grows more sorghum than any other state in the US, and now there is also interest in promoting "millet" as a crop there. The type of millet is not specified - I was assuming proso - but read on.
According to an article entitled "Sorghum gets boost with collaboration with millet" (by Dave Bergmeier, High Plains Journal, 1 Sept. 2023),/1 researchers at Kansas State University (K-State) are interested in water-saving millet as a crop in western Kansas, where declining levels in the Ogallala Aquifer are of increasing concern. This current interest figures in a broader Global Collaboration for Sorghum and Millet (GCSM)/2 announced at the Global Sorghum Conference in Montpelier, France last year/3 by Prof. Ernie Minton, Dean of the K-State College of Agriculture. K-State has also been the host for the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum and Millet (aka Sorghum and Millet Innovation Lab, or SMIL) since 2013./4 SMIL, currently headed by Dr. Timothy Dalton, has research relationships and projects in Africa, where sorghum and pearl millet are major crops. Dr. Dalton is also Director of Research with the GCSM, and Nat Bascom is its Director of Engagement and Leadership. The HPJ article mentioned that the K-State Agricultural Research Center in Hays/5 at one time had a research program on millet./1 This may refer to a research program on pearl millet, led by William Stegmeier beginning in 1969, which later linked to international programs./6/7 This research ended but was apparently restarted by Prof. Ramaswamy Perumal. However, the page on that has been removed, so I retrieved a link on the Wayback Machine./8 K-State and its Research-Extension Centers around Kansas also have a history of research on proso/9 and foxtail millets,/10 as well as sorghum, of course./11 Given this background, it will be interesting to see how their research agenda develops. Don Osborn, PhD (East Lansing, MI, US ) North American Millets Alliance Notes: 1. HPJ article https://hpj.com/2023/09/01/sorghum-gets-boost-with-collaboration-with-millet/ 2. GCSM https://globalsorghumandmillet.com/ 3. K-State Research & Extension News, 5 Jun. 2023 https://www.ksre.k-state.edu/news/stories/2023/06/agriculture-sorghum-millet-collaboration.html 4. SMIL https://smil.k-state.edu/ 5. K-State Hays https://www.wkrec.org/about/locations/archays.html 6. N.B. Christensen, et al, "Pearl Millet: A Potential Crop for Kansas," AES Keeping Up With Research, 77, May 1984. https://www.ksre.k-state.edu/historicpublications/pubs/SRL77.pdf 7. History of the Ag. Res. Ctr. - Hays https://www.ksre.k-state.edu/historicpublications/pubs/SB663.pdf 8. https://web.archive.org/web/20230831132317/https://www.hays.k-state.edu/programs/millet/ 9. https://search.k-state.edu/people.html?qt=%22proso+millet%22&curtab=0 10. https://search.k-state.edu/people.html?qt=%22foxtail+millet%22&curtab=0 11. https://search.k-state.edu/people.html?qt=sorghum&curtab=0
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