The peanut or peanut ( Arachis hypogaea ) is one of the most consumed nuts in the world . Belonging to the legume family, it comes, like all crops domesticated by humans, from wild ancestors. In this case, from the hybridization of two Andean plants that the researchers seem to have identified without any doubt.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia and supported by the International Peanut Genome Initiative (IPGI), has focused on two wild species collected decades ago: Arachis duranensis and Arachis ipaniensis . Genetic sequencing shows an almost complete match with the so-called A and B subgenomes of today’s peanuts .
What was intriguing was that the population of A. ipaensis , located in 1971, was very small and very isolated : its closest relatives grew hundreds of kilometers to the north. Here was a mystery. The scientists tracked down all the botanical documentation at their fingertips, traces of hunter-gatherer movements and the molecular DNA of plants.
Thus they came to the conclusion that the seeds of A. ipaensis had been transferred to those wooded lands of the Bolivian and Argentine Andes about 10,000 years ago . This was the place where the origins of genomes A and B coincided, and where the hybridization that gave rise to the modern peanut would have begun, probably with the help of local bees.
And in addition, the first traces of peanut crops in South America have also been discovered in that area. Everything fit.
