Peanut genome sequenced

ATHENS — The International Peanut Genome Initiative — a group of multinational crop geneticists who have been working in tandem for the last several years — has successfully sequenced the peanut’s genome, officials with the University of Georgia said Wednesday.

The peanut genome sequence will be available to researchers and plant breeders across the globe to aid in the breeding of more productive and more resilient peanut varieties, UGA officials said.

“The peanut crop is important in the United States, but it’s very important for developing nations as well,” said Scott Jackson, director of the University of Georgia Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “In many areas, it is a primary calorie source for families and a cash crop for farmers.”

Jackson chairs the International Peanut Genome Initiative (IPGI).

The peanut, known scientifically as Arachis hypogaea, is an oil- and protein-rich legume that is a cash crop in the developed world and a sustenance crop in developing nations. Globally, farmers tend about 24 million hectares of peanuts each year and produce about 40 million metric tons.

Peanuts are a major row crop throughout the South and Southeast, with about half of U.S. peanuts produced in Georgia. They are crucial to the diets and livelihoods of millions of small farmers in Asia and Africa, many of whom are women.

“Improving peanut varieties to be more drought-, insect- and disease-resistant can help farmers in developed nations produce more peanuts with fewer pesticides and other chemicals and help farmers in developing nations feed their families and build more secure livelihoods,” said plant geneticist Rajeev Varshney of the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics in India, who serves on the IPGI.

Peanuts have been bred for intensive cultivation for thousands of years, but not much was known about its complex genetic structure, according to Peggy Ozias-Akins, a plant geneticist on the UGA Tifton campus who also works with the IPGI and is director of the UGA Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics.

“Until now, we’ve bred peanuts relatively blindly, as compared to other crops,” said IPGI plant geneticist David Bertioli of the Universidade de Bras