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Echinochloa frumentacea
Also called Japanese Millet, White Millet, Siberian Millet, Indian Barnyard Millet, White Panicum, White Panic
Billion-dollar grass (Echinochloa frumentacea), also called Indian barnyard millet, is a fast-growing annual cereal grass grown mainly for its grain. It thrives on marginal, poor-soil land where rice and other crops struggle.
Echinochloa frumentacea (Indian barnyard millet, sawa millet, or billion dollar grass) is a species of Echinochloa. Both Echinochloa frumentacea and E. esculenta are called Japanese millet. This millet is widely grown as a cereal in India, Pakistan, and Nepal. Its wild ancestor is the tropical grass Echinochloa colona, but the exact date or region of domestication is uncertain. It is cultivated on marginal lands where rice and other crops will not grow well. The grains are cooked in water, like rice, or boiled with milk and sugar. Sometimes it is fermented to make beer. While also being part of the staple diet for some communities in India, these seeds are, in particular, (cooked and) eaten during religious fasting (willingly abstaining from some types of food / food ingredients).
Jungle rice · Barnyardgrass · Gulf cockspur grass · Japanese millet · Early Barnyard Grass · Early water grass · Creeping river grass · Hippo grass
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Echinochloa frumentacea by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
