MSc

The study entitled “Capacity Building of Rural Women on Enhancement of Family Nutrition and Livelihood Security through Consumption and Value Addition of Finger Millet”. (Eleusine coracana(L.)Gaertn.) was carried out in the Department of Home Science, College of Agriculture,Vellayani, during the year 2012-2014 with the objective of capacity building of rural women to promote consumption of finger millet (Eleusine coracana(L.)Gaertn.) among rural families to enhance their family nutrition and livelihood security through a campaign approach and to assess its impact.
One hundred respondents were selected randomly from the beneficiaries of ICDS programme from Kalliyoor panchayath. The findings of the socio-economic survey done revealed that majority of the respondents belonged to the age group between thirty six to fifty five years (70 per cent). Majority (63 per cent) of the respondents were educated up to pre degree. Most of the families had monthly income between 9788-19574 rupees per annum and belonged to middle income group.
The food frequency scores revealed that millets were least frequently used. Consumption pattern of finger millet revealed that only 12 per cent were consuming finger millet for feeding their children.
Anthropometric assessment of the respondents revealed that 30 per cent of the respondents were in obese grade I category, 37 per cent of the respondents were in obese grade II category while 2 per cent were suffering from severe chronic energy deficiency. Haemoglobin estimation showed that 71 per cent of the respondents were anaemic with mild to severe anaemia. Disease history of the respondents showed that 41 per cent of them wersuffering from various life style diseases like diabetes, hypercholestremia and hypertension.
Prior to the conduct of awareness programme ten finger millet based recipes already standardized were collected, prepared and subjected to acceptability tests among a selected panel of judges. The four most highly accepted recipes were later subjected to consumer preference test.
Assessment of knowledge, attitude and consumption practices of finger millet conducted before the awareness programme showed that majority of respondents had poor level of knowledge and their attitude and consumption practices were also very low.
The impact of the awareness programme assessed after one month showed that there was significant gain in knowledge, change in their attitude and also a significant change in the consumption of finger millet by the respondents pointing out the positive impact of the programme. The mean scores obtained for knowledge (18.57), attitude (84.52) and consumption practices (12.77) were also seen to be increased after the conduct of the awareness programme. Forty per cent of the respondents expressed their interest to start enterprises for preparation and marketing of value added products of finger millet. The study proved that this programme can be successfully implemented in other parts of our state to promote consumption of finger millet thus ensuring nutritional and livelihood security.