Millet, buckwheat items to hit market

KATHMANDU, March 16: Dubbed the main food grains for the poor in remote villages, millet and buckwheat may soon becoming popular food items for well-to-do families also.



If things go as planned, biscuits, noodles and breads made from millet and buckwheat flour will hit the market once the Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC) releases recipes for these products to small entrepreneurs in a couple of months. [break]



The food research unit at NARC—the government’s agricultural research wing—is developing the recipes.



“We are finalizing the recipes for producing mainly biscuits, breads and noodles from the flour of millet and buckwheat and planning to roll out the recipes by the end of June this year,” Mahendra Jung Thapa, chief of the unit, told myrepublica.com.



In a bid to commercialize the ‘underutilized crops´, the government had announced a special program to encourage the use of millet and buckwheat products.



Thapa said the contents of these products include 12 percent wheat flour, the remaining being millet or buckwheat flour.



“We are exploring this technology, in which we can use the maximum quantity of wheat and millet flour, to encourage these agro crops,” said Thapa, who is leading a team of about half a dozen technicians involved in preparing the recipes.



He said once the production technology reaches small entrepreneurs, it would be a great help in reducing food insecurity in remote districts—where millet and buckwheat are major crops-- through increased consumption of the two foodgrains.



According to him, buckwheat products help to maintain good blood circulation, reduce cholesterol and fight against allergy whereas millet is mainly rich in minerals.



Technology for producing biscuits, noodles, breads and pasta from buckwheat and millet already exists in Japan, Italy and other European countries.



Millet and buckwheat can be produced in most of the Himalayan and hill districts of the country.



According to Hem Raj Regmi, under-secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, around 300,000 tons of millet is produced from about 270,000 hectors of land in Nepal. However, the ministry has no real data on the production of buckwheat.

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