Expansion of the assortment of cultivated crops both of food and of fodder value is a way to increase the output of vegetable protein - a most important nutrient for humans and animals. These crops include millet, which recently has attracted attention due to enhanced droughts. Millet is a drought-tolerant crop, which allows us to consider it as an insurance crop, which ensures the production of food grain to manufacture millet groats, fodder grain and green mass with high fodder qualities. The protein content in millet grain is a very variable trait; its variation is determined by genetic and environmental factors. Therefore, it is the most judicious to select and assess starting material in the breeding zone, and these assessments should be complemented with analysis of the trait plasticity under different climatic conditions. As a result of studying 90 grain and fodder millet accessions from the basic collection of the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources of Ukraine, valuable starting material was identified. It is recommended to be used in breeding programs for creating millet varieties with increased protein content in grain.