Future Prospects for Peanut Improvement

Abstract

Evolution in sequencing technologies led to reduction in costs and increase in speed for generating sequence data. The affordability of low-cost sequencing is expected to make other genotyping platforms obsolete in next couple of years. The concept of “single genome sequence” in a crop has evolved to sequencing of multiple genomes to assemble pangenomes. Sequencing combined with precise phenotyping of segregating populations and germplasm collections is expected to measure the accurate genetic diversity present in the germplasm as well as to identify the gene/nucleotide associated with the trait(s). It is time now to move toward using multi-parents populations from bi-parental populations for trait discovery and identify superior haplotypes. Availability of information on functional variation for genes controlling traits of interest will eventually help in manipulating genes more routinely using appropriate technologies such as marker-assisted selection/backcrossing, genomic selection, and genome editing. This chapter provides expected use of genome sequence and allied information on peanut for accelerating biology research as well as peanut improvement.