Evaluation of released cultivars for blanchability and sugar content in groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.).

Abstract

Groundnut is considered as an important oilseed crop throughout the world and having a unique nutri tional composition.Globally about 48 per cent of the groundnut is used for food purpose and 52 per cent for oil extraction whereas; in India it is 10, 15 and 75 per cent, respectively for food, seed and oil purposes. Blanchability is the capacity of a groundnut genotype to recover kernels with all the testa removed. It is a confectionery trait of economic importance in processed groundnut food products, which include peanut butter, salted groundnuts, candies, bakery products, groundnut flour and others.Sucrose is considered desirable from the organoleptic point of view. Sugars, especially reducing sugars and the free amino acids react during roasting to impart characteristic colour of roasted ground nut and also the nutty flavour. Genotypes with high blanchability and high sugar content will worth rewarding for the industries. Focusing on this objective at ICAR-DGR, Junagadh total 102 released Spanish groundnut varieties are evaluated for blanching and sugar content during Kharif, 2020 and summer 2021. Significant variation was observed for both traits among the varieties. Six varieties recorded >90% blanchability (VRI2, Tirupathi 3, Kadiri 6, TG 26, ICGS 1 and GJG 31) and seven varieties recorded > 6% total soluble sugar content (SB XI, SB improved 1, TG 22, Girnar 3, TMV2, R 2001-2 and TMV 9). These varieties can be exploited in breeding programmes as donor parents along with large seed genotypes to develop good confectionery varieties with large seed size, high sugar and high blanching percentage.