A cost-effective method of breeding millet resistant to disease is now available. This new technique has already been used to insert genes resistant to downy mildew – the most devastating of all the pearl millet diseases – into top hybrid varieties. Poor farmers in Haryana and Rajasthan now grow these hybrids over 150,000 hectares, both as food grain and for animal feed. Government and international laboratories in India use these methods. Millet resistant to mildew could have a huge impact in India where 40% of the world’s millet is grown and over half of world’s poorest people live. Now, the techniques are spreading to the private sector and research organisations in Africa, South Asia and the Americas.