Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

In 2019, PVQE included 28 genotypes: 6 commercial varieties and 22 advanced breeding lines developed by the North
Carolina State University (NCSU) and University of Florida/Virginia Tech peanut breeding programs. All breeding lines have
the 'high oleic' characteristic and they are marked by 'ol' letters in their names. With the exception of Bailey, which is a non-
high oleic or conventional cultivar for this trait, all other commercial cultivars used as checks are high oleic; they are Bailey II,
Emery, Sullivan, Walton, and Wynne. Genotypes were planted from May 3 through June 10 at five locations in three states: at
the Tidewater AREC in Suffolk, VA, Martin Co., NC, the Upper Coastal Plain Research Station (UCPRS) near Rocky Mount,
NC, Bladen County, NC, and the Edisto Research and Education Center at Blackville, SC. At Suffolk and Martin, two digging
dates and two replications within each digging date were planted in a Randomized Complete Block (RCB) design. The first
digging date was approximately two weeks earlier than the optimum harvest date (i.e. the second digging date in this test).
This setting allows the identification of early maturing varieties. At the UCPRS and Bladen County, only one digging date
(optimum) replicated twice at each site were planted. At the Edisto Research and Education Center, additional cultivars were
used. For all locations, cultivars were compared with the breeding lines for yield and grading characteristics as the ultimate
objective is the development of improved Virginia-type peanut cultivars.
For objective 1-3, timely results were produced each year. More specifically, yield and farmer-stock grading data including
percentages of foreign material (FM), loose shelled kernels (LSK), jumbo and fancy pods, extra-large kernels (ELK), sound
mature kernels (SMK), sound splits (SS), other kernels (OK), and damaged kernels (DK) were measured and recorded. Price
per pound was calculated by the federal formula and the crop value per acre obtained as the product of yield times the price
per pound. This information was made available to the PVQE Advisory Committee (PVQEAC) comprised of breeders,
researchers, growers, shellers, processors, manufacturers, and certified seed producers and distributors in the VC region.
Due to COVID-19, this year the PVQE-AC meeting was virtual and included only the sub-committee with a reduced number of
participants. In this meeting, 'NC20' peanut was proposed for release as a high yielding cultivar with superior resistance to the
leaf spot disease. To address objective 3, only high oleic breeding lines were included in PVQE testing during the course of
this project. 'NC20' is a high oleic cultivar and it was released after the PVQE-AC approval by NCSU.
To address objective 4, 12 breeding lines and 2 checks were exposed to soil moisture deprivation for the later part of the
growing season using rain exclusion shelters. This test showed that NC20 maintained high yield and percent Fancy pods, and
low DK percent after 4 weeks of low soil moisture stress, at similar levels with the drought-tolerant species-derived germplasm
line used in this test, the 'GP-NC WS17'.

Graduate students and one postdoc helped with the field trials, data analysis, and PVQE publications, which provided them
with the opportunity to grow professionally. In addition, grower trainings were organized during the course of this project in
2020, in-person and virtually, following the COVID-19 guidance from the university.

In Jan 2020, PVQE 2019 data were included in two reports published online on the Virginia Cooperative Extension website,
https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/author/b/balota-maria.resource.html. In Feb 2020, information was presented to growers,
shellers, processors, certified seed producers, and researchers during the Virginia Peanut Production Annual Meeting. In
May, PVQE data was disseminated to the PVQE-AC; and also on Aug 14 at a virtual field tour; and, finally, in a series of in-

person meetings with farmers in Sep 2020.

Balota, M., Cazenave*, A. B., Dunne, J., and Anco D., 2020. Peanut Variety and Quality Evaluation results I: 2019
agronomic and grade data*. Virginia Tech and Virginia Coop. Ext. Publ. SPES-93NP. 41 p.
https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/SPES/SPES-93/SPES-93.html.

Balota, M., Cazenave*, A. B., Dunne, J., and Anco D., 2020. Peanut Variety and Quality Evaluation results II: 2019 quality
data*. Virginia Tech and Virginia Coop. Ext. Publ. AREC-64NP. 45 p. https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/AREC/AREC-64/AREC-
64.html.