Editorial: Advances in peanut research

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important oilseed crop, which is cultivated in over 100 countries. High yield, nutritional quality, resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and mechanization in cultivation and harvest are still the goals of peanut breeding in many countries. Peanut is an allotetraploid legume (AABB, 2n = 4x = 40, 2.7 Gb) that derived from hybridization between two diploid peanuts A. duranensis (AA) and A. ipaensis (BB) in the region from southern Bolivia to northern Argentina about 9400 years ago (Bertioli et al., 2019). With rapid development of bioinformatic tools, sequencing of several peanut genomes, including three cultivated allotetraploid peanuts (i.e., Tiffrunner, Shitouqi and Fuhuasheng) and two ancestral diploid species, made detailed studies of Functional genomics in peanuts possible (Bertioli et al., 2016; Bertioli et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2019; Zhuang et al., 2019). Analyzing the genetic basis and developing molecular markers of important traits will likely provide the essential knowledge for genetic improvement of peanuts. In order to speed up the genetic improvement of peanut, the Research Topic of “Advances in Peanut Research” aimed at addressing gaps in the research areas of genetics, Functional genomics, and germplasm development in the Arachis genus, which will lead to a better understanding of the yield, seed quality, response to abiotic and biotic stresses of peanuts, thereby to achieve sustainable production of peanut in the future.