Physiological basis for realizing yield potentials in Groundnut

Abstract

The groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L) is an important food legume of tropical and subtropical areas ranking 13th among the principal economic crops of the world and grown in about 120 countries in different agro-climatic regions right from high rainfall areas to arid region between latitudes 40ºS and 40ºN. Though South America is the native of Arachis, through colonial sea board by Spanish and Portuguese it was disseminated to other countries and now being cultivated on about 25 million hectare (ha) of land mainly in Asian (13.35 mha), African (10.05 m ha) and American (1.16 m ha) countries. However, on large scale it is mainly grown in India, China, Nigeria, USA, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sudan, Senegal, Argentina and Vietnam. As on date the groundnut productivity is less than 1000 kg ha-1 in more than 50% of the groundnut growing countries in the world, between 1000-2000 kg ha-1 in 35-40% of the countries and only 10-15 % of the countries had the productivity above 2000 kg ha-1 (FAO, 2008). There is wide range of groundnut productivity varying from about 500 kg ha-1 (poor) in Angola and Mozambique (extremely low 300-333 kg ha-1), Namibia, Niger, Cameroon, Uruguay and Zimbabwe, about 3000 kg ha-1 (high) in China, Egypt, Syrian Arab Republic, about 4000 in USA, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Nicaragua, as much as 6400 kg ha-1 (very high) in Israel and extremely high (more than 12000 kg ha-1 ) in Cyprus (FAO, 2008). However, the world average yield is around 1500 kg ha-1 and about 70% of the world groundnut production occurs in the semi-arid to arid tropics where the average yield is still around 1000 kg ha-