Impact of millet value addition training in Dharmapuri District of Tamil Nadu

The present study was undertaken with the objective to assess the effectiveness of training on millet value addition as an enterprise/ self employment venture. The training programme was focused for educated unemployed semi urban/ rural youth who have interest in self employment. Skill development training on preparation of value added products like ready mix, health mix, murukku mix, adai mix, paniyaram mix, sancks, cookies, bread, cake and rusk from millets was imparted to thirty farmers for the period of one month. The impact of the training was assessed by pre and post evaluation testing in terms of improvement in knowledge for different parameters. It was observed that trainees had gained knowledge on instant millet food preparation, millet bakery foods, millet noodles, millet snacks and packaging of value added products preparation and nutritive value of millets after training. Thus, it can be inferred that exposure to training had increased the knowledge of respondents related to all the sub-components of millet value addition. It may therefore, be concluded that trainees succeeded in acquiring knowledge after exposure to training on millet value addition.