Groundnut: Genetic Approaches to Enhance Adaptation of Groundnut (Arachis Hypogaea, L.) to Drought

Groundnut or peanut is grown as an oilseed or food crop in more than 100 countries under diverse agroclimatic conditions. About 80% of the world's groundnut is grown in drylands of semiarid tropics that experience erratic droughts and high temperature variability. The impending climate change characterized by an increase in frequency and severity of droughts and elevated temperatures has accentuated negative impacts on the groundnut productivity. Therefore, it is essential to put in place genetic and management interventions in an environmentally sustainable manner to combat negative impacts of climate change. The chapter focuses on the abiotic constraints to groundnut production and describes the current understanding of the crop improvement, under each chapter, with reference to enhancing the adaptive capacity of groundnut to the targeted abiotic stresses. A significant progress has been made in characterizing the genetic variability for various adaptive traits in cultivated “tetraploid” groundnut. Conceptual approaches tested have demonstrated the potential for trait‐based breeding by introgressing discrete components of Passioura's yield model. The existing literature suggest that success of crop improvement for drought by introgression of several traits can be achieved through exploiting the existing genetic variability, identification, and characterization of most relevant traits and genes from the germplasm collections and promising trait donor wild races. However, the introgression of multiple traits of interest through conventional breeding has been slow, costly, and laborious due to a lack of rapid and cost‐effective selection tools. Recent advances in DNA technologies have opened up novel opportunities to enable marker‐assisted selection and breeding in a number of crops. Besides, transgenics technology has emerged as an alternative option for trait pyramiding. However, the challenge in groundnut has been to generate genomic resources to utilize them in molecular breeding program. This chapter provides insights into current research knowledge on the groundnut crop improvement for drought adaptations and a few potential options, which are promising for challenges to be addressed.