Potential of Kersting’s groundnut [Macrotyloma geocarpum (Harms) Maréchal & Baudet] and prospects for its promotion

Kersting’s groundnut is a tropical crop, highly nutritious, adapted to drought-prone areas. The crop is neglected both by researchers and by policy makers. This paper aimed at providing relevant information on the current status of the crop and the prospects to promote its improvement and production. To this end, available papers addressing any of the following aspect: distribution, nutritional value, cropping systems, post-harvest processing, usages, value chains, conservation status, genetic diversity and improvement of Kersting’s groundnut were reviewed. In West Africa, the crop provides substantial income for rural population. Kersting’s groundnut has several medicinal uses and cultural values as well. However, because of its intensive labor requirement, low yield and non-availability of improved varieties, its cultivation is declining and it is even disappearing gradually in some growing areas. The promotion of the crop’s value chains is an option for reversing the declining trend in Kersting’s groundnut cultivation. In recent years, some progress has been recorded in the collection, characterization and ex situ conservation of the crop. Thus, there are currently about 100 accessions conserved in various gene banks in Benin, Ghana, France and Belgium. This is still insufficient as compared to the genetic resources available in ex situ for most of the grown legume crops. To cope with this, extensive germplasm collection and their systematic characterization and evaluation coupled with new generation genomic tools need to be undertaken. For this purpose, genomic resources developed for Kersting’s groundnut-related species will be valuable assets. The exploitation of genomic resources will enable the development of core and mini-core collections for conservation and breeding purposes. In addition, the use of genomic resources will speed up Kersting’s groundnut breeding programs. Furthermore, the genetic base of the crop is extremely narrow and there is a need to broaden it for substantial genetic gain in breeding programs. For this purpose, mutation induction has been proposed as technique to increase variability in the Kersting’s groundnut germplasm. Invest in Kersting’s groundnut research is key to ensure the conservation and exploit the potential of the crop.