Pearl millet is as tough as nails. It produces grain and fodder under very hot and dry conditions, and on soils too poor for sorghum and maize. Its combination of rapid growth rate when conditions are favorable, high temperature tolerance, and ability to extract mineral nutrition and water from even the poorest soils make it impossible to beat in the world's harshest agricultural production environments. Pearl millet can stand up to drought, heat, insects, poor soils, flash floods -- and just about anything else you can throw at it, except downy mildew.

Photo: ICRISAT