Peanut History In a Nutshell

By Lindsay Stevens

Peanuts are found everywhere, from being boiled at Southern gas stations to serving as Georgia’s official state crop. It’s safe to say this mighty legume has found its way into our hearts in the peanut belt. However, the modern peanut we think of today has had a long and winding history that has led us here.

Nature’s Chance and Human Ingenuity

The modern peanut originated in South America around 8,000 years ago, in a region today known as Northern Argentina and Southern Bolivia. According to researchers, there is overwhelming evidence that it comes from a rare cross between two wild species. Then, the hybrid underwent another rare event of genome duplication.

Dr. Soraya Leal-Bertioli is a senior research scientist at the University of Georgia. She and her husband, Dr. David Bertioli, run the Wild Peanut Lab.

“It was probably a plant with small seeds, but more vigorous, prolific and more prone to domestication,” Dr. Leal-Bertioli said. “Since it has been cultivated and selected by native peoples for higher number of seeds, larger pods, better flavor, resistance to pests and tolerance to stresses. Now we have a beautiful plant and tasty snack thanks to nature’s chance and human ingenuity.”

Native peoples spread peanuts from Argentina and Bolivia to other parts of South America and up into Mexico. As early as 1500 B.C., the Incans of Peru used peanuts as sacrificial offerings and entombed them with their mummies to aid in spirit life.

During Spanish exploration, peanuts were taken back to Spain and from there, they traveled around the world, including Africa. It’s believed that during the 1700s when Africans were brought to the U.S. as enslaved people, they carried some of their essential foods with them, which included the peanut (1). Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus was the first to describe peanuts in 1753, and botanically speaking, the peanut was very similar to the one we know today, however, as a crop it was very different.

“Because there was no breeding or cultivation technology, peanuts did not have the attention they do today,” Dr. LealBertioli said. “The seeds were planted and harvested by hand, it had low yield, and it had limited uses.”

The first known commercial peanut crop in the U.S. was grown in 1842 in Virginia’s Sussex County, close to the present-day town of Waverly (2).

The Modern Peanut

According to Dr. Leal-Bertioli, until the 1950s, peanuts had very little input and mechanization, but between the 1950s and mid-1980s there was more investment in technological advances, specifically chemical control of weeds, leaf spots, and seed- and soil-born disease. These developments led to a dramatic increase in yield.

“However, in the 1980s there was a huge setback in production with the emergence of the tomato-spotted-wilt virus, which severely reduced productivity by nearly 50%,” Dr. Leal-Bertioli said. “Luckily, resistance to this virus was found in a peanut type that had been obtained by an open market in Brazil years before. This plant started to be used by the main breeding programs and is today in the pedigree of most modern cultivars and is said to have saved the peanut industry from collapse in the ’90s.”

Since then, efforts into breeding have continued and investments have increased. Crop management and breeding now walk hand in hand to reduce input costs. Dr. Leal-Bertioli said that most peanut cultivars have some level of resistance to pests and diseases, such as root-knot nematode, insects and leaf spots.

The use of wild species, done on a small scale since the 1970s, is becoming more and more important in today’s world. Initially, it was more challenging since wild peanuts have 20 chromosomes, whereas cultivated species have 40 chromosomes. However, a pipeline has been created so that researchers can transfer resistances to pests and diseases, yield stability under different environments, drought tolerance, productivity, seed size, etc.

“Peanuts’ wild relatives give a clear edge in the race against pathogens and is important not only to sustain yields but to reduce inputs, helping with sustainability of the crop,” Dr. Leal-Bertioli said. “The U.S. National Peanut Germplasm Collection is the guardian of over 60% of all wild species that have ever been collected and have an enormous unexplored potential.”

In the first half of the 20th century, yields averaged around 900 pounds an acre. Today, average yields can exceed 4,000 pounds an acre. As research and breeding continue, our hopes of what this tiny peanut can offer also grow. As of now, the possibilities are countless.

Sources

(1) “Peanuts: A Brief History.” American Peanut Council, https://www.peanutsusa.com/2-about-peanuts/7-peanuts-a-brief-history.html.

(2) Keppel, Patricia. “But Did You Know...the History of Virginia Peanuts.” Virginia's Travel Blog, 10 Feb. 2022, https://blog.virginia.org/2020/10/virginia-peanuts-history/.