Minor millets in South Asia: learnings from IFAD-NUS project in India ...

64 minor millets in south asia
house wives and the farm families.
This greatly helped them in developing
diversified value added products.
The DRHS served as a platform for
providing the training and enhancing
the knowledge of many SHG members
associated with this project in India and
Nepal. The scientists working under
the project worked as resource persons
for the training programmes to impart
training on processing, value addition
and product development of finger
millet and other small millets.
Several value added products
Fig. 11. participants in trainers’ training
programme at tumkur
were developed from finger millet grains with low investments and were demonstrated
to the participants through various training programmes. With minimum additional
expenditure, the farm women were able to prepare value added finger millet food
items which were highly diversified and more attractive to youngsters in the family.
Imparting of the training helped the officers to take up further training programmes
in other parts of the finger millet growing areas.
A total of 153 participants belonging to different categories including NGOs,
officers of State Department of Agriculture, members of self help groups and farm
women from different places were provided training on processing, value addition
and product development (Figs. 10, 11) organized at different centres (Table 7).
Table 7. Training programmes organized on value addition and product development
S. No. Date of training Place of training No. of Category of participants
programme
programme
participants
1. 27-28 June, 2002 uas, hebbal,
23 NGOs, SHGs, farm women, officers
Bangalore
of agriculture department
2 19 march, 2003 Chintamani, Kolar
district
34 Farm women in project area
3. 13-14 may, 2003 tumkur 40 selected ngo’s, shg members,
farm women, officers of Agril. Dept.
4. 12 July , 2003 anekal, Bangalore 35 Farm women of anekal taluk
-shivanahalli and nearby villages
5. 22-23 december, 2003 uas, hebbal,
21 selected ngo’s, farm women,
Bangalore
officials and SHG members.
Total 153
Practical demonstrations for the preparation of different value added products were
also given to the participants during the training (Figs. 12, 13).