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

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) μmol TEg(-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.