Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first evidence of human consumption of millet dates back approximately 7,000 years. Archaeological findings at the Cishan site in China reveal storage pits containing proso millet husks and biomolecular components dating back 10,300 to 8,700 years. These findings suggest that these grains were the bedrock of early settled societies in East Asia.
Pearl millet belongs to the tribe Paniceae while finger millet resides in the tribe Cynodonteae. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service have spent decades untangling these relationships to reveal that millets are a taxonomically diverse group spanning multiple tribes and subfamilies.
The domestication of pearl millet occurred around 6000 BC north east of the Senegal River in West Africa. Early archaeological evidence from Birimi in northern Ghana and Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania dating between 2500 and 1683 cal BC confirms that this crop was the cornerstone of survival in some of the world's most unforgiving environments.
The crop is subject to damage by a myriad of insect pests including corn borers stemborers and the caterpillars of numerous moths in the families Erebidae and Noctuidae. Fungal infections such as anthracnose blast charcoal rot downy mildew ergot grain mould rust and sheath rot pose serious threats to the harvest.
In 2022 global production of millet reached 30.9 million tonnes with India alone accounting for 11.8 million tonnes or 38% of the world total. The remaining nine nations in the top 10 producers are predominantly in Africa ranging from Niger which produced 3.7 million tonnes to Chad which produced 0.7 million tonnes.