It has a variable number of tillers, panicle length, seed size, and color. Finger millet is a smaller grass, adapted to more humid growing conditions. It too is grown for its straw as well as its grain. Historians believe that pearl millet originated from western tropical Africa more than 3000 years ago and was then taken to East Africa. Similarly, finger millet is a native of Africa that crossed the Indian Ocean to South Asia more than a thousand years ago.
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. Downy mildew, a close relative of the pseudo-fungus that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840's, replaces perfectly good grains with useless tendrils. Finger millet too has outstanding properties as a subsistence food crop. Its small seeds can be stored safely for many years without insect damage, which makes it a traditional component of farmers' risk avoidance strategies in drought-prone regions of Eastern Africa and South Asia.