ਬਾਜਰਾ

What does bajra mean in Punjabi? Bajra (ਬਾਜਰਾ) is the Punjabi name for pearl millet, a tall, hardy grain grown for food and for cattle fodder. It is a kharif season crop that thrives in hot, dry land with little rain, which is why farmers in the drier tracts of Punjab have relied on it for generations.

What does bajra mean in Punjabi?

Bajra is pearl millet, the most widely grown type of millet in the world. Wikipedia records that it has been grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times, and that its centre of diversity and suggested area of domestication is the Sahel zone of West Africa. The plant stands anywhere from half a metre to four metres tall, and its ovoid grains, three to four millimetres long, are the largest kernels of any millet. In the northern Indian states the crop is simply called bajra, and for a long time it stood with sorghum and finger millet among the staple food crops of the region.

Where is bajra grown in Punjab?

Bajra is grown where water is scarce. AgriHunt, the agricultural knowledge site, notes that in Punjab its cultivation is concentrated in the barani, or rain-fed, areas of Pothwar and the dry region of Bahawalpur, and that it does best on light sandy loam. Wikipedia explains why the crop fits such land: it is well adapted to drought, low soil fertility, low moisture and high temperature, and it can produce a crop in places where maize or wheat would not survive. As a summer annual it also fits double cropping and field rotations.

How is bajra used in Punjab?

Bajra is a dual-purpose crop, grown both for grain and for fodder. Its green fodder is valued for cattle, its mixed cropping with maize and sorghum is popular, and fodder sowings run from March to July while grain sowings wait for the onset of the monsoon, with only two or three irrigations needed for a fodder crop. In the kitchen, bajra flour is kneaded into thick winter rotis, the flatbread style called bhakri, and in Rajasthan the same flour is cooked with yogurt as bajre ki khatti rabdi. After the Green Revolution of the 1960s, bajra shrank in many northern districts to mainly a fodder crop, but the grain never left the winter table.