Pearl millet
species of plant
Pearl millet (Cenchrus americanus, commonly known as the synonym Pennisetum glaucum) is the most widely grown type of millet. It has been grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times. The center of diversity and suggested area of domestication for the crop is in the Sahel zone of West Africa.
Description
Pearl millet has ovoid grains of 3–4 millimetres (1⁄8–5⁄32 in) length, the largest kernels of all varieties of millet (not including sorghum). These can be nearly white, pale yellow, brown, grey, slate blue or purple. The 1,000-seed weight can be anything from 2.5 to 14 g with a mean of 8 g.
The height of the plant ranges from 0.5–4 metres (1 ft 8 in – 13 ft 1 in).
Pearl millet varieties from the world collection probably have more variation in physical characteristics than any other millet. Kernel shape has different classifications: obovate, hexagonal, lanceolate, globular and elliptical. In Africa, pearl millet is classified as either globular or lanceolate and hexagonal.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pearl millet” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pearl, millet and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q50840653. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pearl millet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.