ABSTRACT
Millet is a staple cereal crop mainly cultivated for forage, feed, and most importantly for food in India, China, Africa, and other countries of the world. Moreover, it is famous due to its excellent nutritional and therapeutical properties as it is a rich source of minerals, proteins, and carbohydrates including starch. Herein, starch is a carbohydrate complex mainly composed of amylose and amylopectin. The starch content of millet is varied based on its geographical location and type of cultivar. Several isolation methods are used to obtain a high amount of starch from millets (aqueous, acid, alkali, enzymatic extraction, etc.). Furthermore, the morphological characteristics (size and shape of starch granules), functional properties (water holding, swelling power), and rheological properties of starch are highly variable depending upon the isolation methods. The wet milling-based methods are the major methods used for the extraction of starch. Millet starch has type-A starch crystallinity. Various analytical techniques used to characterize starch properties are X-ray diffraction (XRD) (used to study the crystalline behaviour of starch), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) (used to study the surface morphology of starch), differenctial scanning colourimetry (DSC) (used to study the thermal stability of starch), etc. Due to the diverse industrial applications of starch, it is effectively used in food and nonfood industrial applications. Being an eco-friendly, cost-effective material, its demand is also increasing in fields other than food. Thus, in this chapter, we have discussed the starches of different millets along with their chemical and physical properties and industrial applications.
