In Virginia, an international group of agricultural scientists have mapped the genetic code of the peanut. According to The Peanut Foundation, the culmination of a five-year research project will give scientists around the world a map with which to unlock some of the genetic potential of the peanut plant. The data will be openly available to all scientists.
This discovery by the Peanut Genome Consortium, a group of scientists from the U.S., China, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, India, Israel, and several countries in Africa, gives scientists the capability to find beneficial genes in cultivated and wild peanuts that can lead to greater yields, lower production costs, lower losses to disease, improved processing traits, improved nutrition, improved safety, better flavor and virtually anything that is genetically determined by the peanut plant.
Many researchers contributed to this project, with The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology coordinating the assembly of the final peanut genome.