Digital technologies could provide a new approach to managing millet supply chains, with researchers developing an integrated architecture designed to improve traceability, transparency and data exchange from farms to consumers.

A peer-reviewed study published in Scientific Reports introduces a Millet Supply Chain Management System (MSCMS) built around four interconnected technological layers. The research was conducted by Suchit Kumar Singh, Rakesh Kumar Lenka, Soubhagya Ranjan Mallick and Pramod K. Pandey.

The first layer uses sensors and Internet of Things devices to collect information across the supply chain. Farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and consumers can form part of the connected network, allowing information generated at different stages of the millet value chain to be captured digitally.

The second layer introduces edge computing, where some data processing and predictive analysis takes place closer to its source instead of sending every operation directly to a central server. The researchers designed this approach to reduce latency and enable faster operational responses.

A central cloud platform forms the third layer, providing scalable data sharing, longer-term storage and network access for participating stakeholders.

The fourth layer incorporates a permissioned Ethereum blockchain, smart contracts and QR codes. The objective is to create secure and verifiable records while enabling products and transactions to be traced across different stages of the millet supply chain.

Testing reported substantial performance improvements. With 500 connected IoT devices, increasing edge nodes from one to four reduced end-to-end execution latency from 880 milliseconds to 620 milliseconds—a 29.5% reduction. The architecture achieved peak throughput of 165 transactions per second.

The researchers also reduced blockchain storage requirements from 175 MB to 55 MB per 1,000 transactions. QR-code-based consumer traceability produced responses in 560 milliseconds, reported as 39.1% faster than the conventional blockchain configuration used for comparison.

Resilience testing produced another notable result. When researchers simulated ten simultaneous node failures, the integrated architecture maintained 75% availability, compared with 30% for the standalone blockchain configuration and 5% for the central-cloud setup used in the study.

For the millet industry, such architecture could eventually support better visibility across production, processing, logistics and retail. QR-based traceability could also provide consumers and supply-chain participants with access to verifiable product information.

However, the results should be described as those of a proposed and experimentally evaluated digital framework, rather than evidence that the technology has already been deployed throughout commercial millet supply chains.

The research demonstrates how technologies increasingly associated with digital manufacturing and logistics could be adapted specifically for millet value chains, potentially creating more connected, transparent and data-driven supply networks.