Genomics of Peanut, a Major Source of Oil and Protein

Abstract

Peanut, as a source of oil and protein, is the second-most important grain legume cultivated. The perceived lack of molecular variation in the cultivated species had, until recently, resulted in a focus on characterization and mapping of wild species and on transformation of peanut with genes for improved disease resistance. With development of simple sequence repeats and potentially single nucleotide polymorphism-based markers and improved minicore collections, the focus is shifting towards the molecular characterization of the cultivated species. The development of large-inset libraries, expressed sequence tags, genomic clone libraries, characterized mutant collections, and bioinformatics is expected to advance peanut genomics.