High oleic peanut breeding: Achievements, perspectives, and prospects

Background: The nutritional quality, flavor, and shelf-life of both peanut products and its seeds are dependent on relative quantity of various fatty acids (FM) like saturated, mono unsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) and poly unsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) present in its oil. High oleic (HO) peanut oils are extremely valued due to its superior nutritional composition for human health and augmented thermo-oxidative stability for industrial purposes. Scope and approach: From the research perspective, noteworthy progress has been made during last three decades for the development of peanut lines having HO trait in its oil. In this review, the research achievements, perspectives, and prospects of peanut genetic improvement for HO trait is thoroughly discussed. Key findings and conclusions: The research has helped not only understanding the genetics of HO traits and its genotype (G) by environment (E) interaction but also produced an enormous number of HO line throughout the world. Although, as of now, most of the high OIL cultivars developed are the outcome of traditional breeding efforts. But, with the advent of novel molecular techniques like CAPS and AS-PCR assay for HO peanut breeding program, it is extremely easy to achieve the traits through marker assisted selection (MAS) rather than through either conventional or genetic engineering approaches. The availability of peanut genome sequence and identification of different ahFAD2 gene families is also expediting the research for the breeding of HO peanut genotypes.