The U.S. germplasm collection for peanut, Arachis hypogaea L., consist
s of 7432 accessions and contains a great amount of genetic diversity.
Information on economically important traits does not exist for most
accessions due to the time and labor required for evaluation. The deve
lopment of a core collection for peanut would provide a subset of acce
ssions that are representative of the entire collection and that could
be extensively examined. The objective of this research was to select
a core collection for peanut. Data for the U.S. peanut germplasm coll
ection were obtained from the Germplasm Resources Information Network
(GRIN). The entire germplasm collection was then stratified by country
of origin and by the amount of available morphological data. When inf
ormation was available for at least four of the same morphological var
iables for at least 16 accessions from the same country of origin, the
n the data for these accessions were analyzed using multivariate stati
stical analysis. Results allowed the accessions to be clustered into g
roups which, theoretically, are genetically similar. Random sampling w
as then used to select almost-equal-to 10% from each group. Accessions
with inadequate data for multivariate analysis were selected using a
10% random sample from each country of origin. Accessions from countri
es having few (less-than-or-equal-to 5) entries in the collection were
pooled and a 10% random sample was selected. The resulting 831 access
ions form a core collection for peanut. Examination of data for six ph
enotypic traits indicated that the genetic variation expressed for eac
h trait in the entire collection has been preserved in this core colle
ction. This peanut core collection has many potential uses and should
increase the utilization of peanut germplasm resources.