Quality traits of Indian peanut cultivars and their utility as nutritional and functional food

•Kernels of forty-one peanut cultivars showed considerable variations for nutritional and functional traits.•A positive correlation was observed between kernel phenol content and antioxidant capacity.•Two cultivars each for high sucrose content, and high O/L ratio were identified.•For high antioxidant capacity and low oil content, three cultivars were identified.•Low RFOs and high oil content were observed in four cultivars. Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is considered as a highly nutritious foodstuff. Of late, the importance of peanut as a functional food has been growing. Kernels of forty-one Indian peanut cultivars were analyzed for their oil, fatty acid profiles, sucrose, raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs); phenolics, and free amino acids contents along with antioxidant capacity. The range and the mean value (given in parenthesis) for each of the traits analysed were, oil: 44.1–53.8% (50.1%), O/L ratio: 0.9–2.8 (1.4), sucrose: 2.61–6.5% (4.63%), RFOs: 0.12–0.76% (0.47%), phenolics: 0.14–0.39% (0.23%), free amino acids: 0.052–0.19% (0.12%) and antioxidant capacity: 1.05–6.97 (3.40)μmolTEg−1. The significant correlation between phenol content and antioxidant capacity suggests phenol content as an easy marker for rapid screening of genotypes for their antioxidant capacity. A few cultivars with desirable traits and their prospective utility were identified which would be useful for future breeding programme to develop nutritional superior peanuts.