Peanut, also known as ground nuts are consumed by many people around
the world, being characterized by the impressed nutritive value. The high
content of minerals like zinc, magnesium, copper, potassium or phosphorus,
also fibers and antioxidants make peanuts a source of nutrients that can help
the human body to remain healthy and fit. Today, the importance of peanuts
increased a lot; they are one of the most important crops in the world, being
used in food, in cosmetics and industry. Peanuts breeding are conducted according
to the seed destination. Peanuts that are intended for oil extraction
must have a debarking rate more than 72% and oil content more than 50%.
For the fresh or roasted peanuts for human nutrition the content of oil should
be less than 45% and weight more than 150gr/100 pods. According to the agronomic
particularities peanuts have reduced requirements to soil (good results
on sandy soil), require smaller amounts of fertilizers, enriches the soil
with nitrogen (above 100kg/ha) due to bacterial nodules on the roots. The
countries with the highest number of population – China and India – together
produce over 50% of the global peanuts harvest. The peanuts cultivation
is carried out in warm regions, sunshine, with moderate rainfall, but also in
temperate regions, which includes Moldova too. In our country the peanuts
are cultivated due to the high adaptability of this plant and the presence of
early varieties homologated in Moldova (‘Fazenda I’, ‘Kovarschii 17’, etc…).
Peanut can be considered as one of the most advantageous and cost-effective
crop due to the production that can be obtained and multiples fields of use
of obtained harvest. For this reason peanuts present a great interest for scientific
researches performed at Institute of Genetics, Physiology and Plant
Protection of the Academy of Science of Moldova. But climatic changes that
are produced in last years at global and regional levels intensified the frequency
of various climatic risk factors as: sudden changes of temperatures,
a very long drought period, disastrous floods, short and warm winters, etc.,
which often diminish the value of the production. The main goal of research
is to improve the quality of existing varieties, create early varieties, with
high food productivity, high resistance to disease, pests, drought, and different
climatic risk factors – which present a major problem of Moldovan
agriculture. The experimental mutagenesis methods are successfully used
in plant breeding for obtaining the valuable initial material. One of these
methods is the gamma-ray-induced mutagenesis. The gamma radiation is
useful in the induction of genetic variability, that presents a large spectrum

of mutations and a high frequency of their manifestation. This method was
used in our researches in order to obtain the valuable initial material for
peanut breeding. The used biological material was peanut ‘Fazenda I’, approved
in Moldova, that was treated with gamma rays doses of 100, 200 and
300 Gy. The result of gamma-ray-induced mutagenesis was the obtaining of
peanut mutant forms with significant increase of oil and protein content.
The biochemical analysis of allowed selecting the forms that are evidenced
by a high oil content: from 56.57% to 54.15% (‘M101’, ‘M107’), and protein:
from 27.86% to 28.52% (‘M124’, ‘M91’). The obtained results confirm the already
known fact that the oil content in seeds is in negative correlation with
protein content. It should be noted that in case of peanuts, the oil and protein
content depends on the climatic conditions and is characterized by specific
genotype variability for each variety. The analyses of the mass of 100 seeds
of studied forms attested that characterized by high productivity. The mass
varied from 51.2gr to 54.1gr (‘M91’, ‘M96’), while in the control the mass was
50.8gr. Thus, based on the above, it is clear that the weight varies between
the forms and controls and largely depends on the climatic conditions of the
year. The results of research in the field of gamma ray induced of mutations
have allowed to determine the important features of mutational variability
and by careful selection of peanut, there were obtained the mutant forms
with high oil content, protein and productivity. The obtained forms represent
a great interest for peanuts breeding and reproduction in Moldova.