Germplasm Characterization and Trait Discovery in Peanut

Abstract

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important oilseed and cash crop worldwide. The peanut germplasm is fundamental to genetic enhancement for improved cultivars. A lot of germplasm accessions of the cultivated peanut and wild Arachis species have been assembled and conserved in many countries, with ICRISAT, USDA, and OCRI-CAAS being the major conserving agencies. Besides a lot of peanut germplasm characterization work conducted by various scientists in the world, remarked progress has been achieved in the past two decades in assessing the genetic diversity within A. hypogaea after the peanut core and mini core collections were selected in the USA, ICRISAT, and China. With extensive and intensive germplasm characterization, elite peanut accessions with desirable traits have been identified for further breeding and other research purposes. Research priorities of trait discovery and genetic enhancement have been given to yield-related characters, resistance to late leaf spot, early leaf spot, rust, tomato spotted wilt virus, groundnut rosette virus, bacterial wilt, nematodes and aflatoxin contamination, tolerance to drought, and quality-related characters such as oil content, protein content, and fatty acid components. With the development of genomic tools, molecular approaches have been widely applied in peanut germplasm characterization and trait discovery.