Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Growers in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina generally grow Virginia-type cultivars due to suitability to regional
environmental conditions and existence of a strong peanut industry tailored to process primarily the large-seeded Virginia-
type peanut. These three states represent the VC peanut growing region, and they represent the primary Virginia-type
production region in the USA. These three states collaborate through a multistate project, the Peanut Variety Quality
Evaluation (PVQE), to evaluate advanced breeding lines and commercial cultivars throughout their production regions. The
objectives of this project are: 1) to determine yield, grade, quality, and disease response of commercial cultivars and
advanced breeding lines at various locations in Virginia and the Carolinas, 2) develop a database for Virginia-type peanut to
allow research-based selection of the best genotypes by growers, industry, and the breeding programs, and 3) to identify the
most suited peanut genotypes for various regions that can be developed into commercial varieties. The most recently
released cultivars developed as part of the PVQE program and currently grown in the VC region are 'Bailey' (2008), 'Sugg'
(2009), 'Titan' (2010), 'Sullivan' (2015), 'Wynne' (2013), 'Emery' (2015), 'Bailey II' (2017), 'Walton' (2019) and 'NC20'
(2020).
In 2020, PVQE included 30 genotypes: 6 commercial varieties and 24 advanced breeding lines developed by the North
Carolina State University (NCSU) and University of Florida/Virginia Tech peanut breeding programs. All breeding lines have
'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. These cultivars include
Bailey II, Emery, Sullivan, Walton, and Wynne.
As part of this project, genotypes were planted from May 13 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 Tidewater AREC and Martin Co., NC, 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 identification of early maturing varieties. At the UCPRS and Bladen County, NC sites only one
digging date (optimum) was replicated twice. At the Edisto Research and Education Center, additional region-specific cultivars
were employed. For all locations, cultivars were compared with the breeding lines for yield and grading characteristics as the
ultimate objective was 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 included percentage 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). 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, the PVQEAC annual meeting was virtual. In this meeting,
'NC20' peanut was presented as a high yielding cultivar with superior resistance to 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 PVQEAC approval by the 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 as well as 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, 'GP-NC WS17'.
One graduate student and one postdoc assisted (and gained knowledge in experimental design) with the field trials, data
analysis and PVQE publications. This undoubtedly provided them with the opportunity to grow professionally. In addition,
grower trainings were organized during the course of this project in 2021. We organized two in-person field tours, one in
general on peanut production at the Tidewater AREC and a second specifically on PVQE research at the Taylor Slade Farm
near Williamston, NC. In Sep 2021, two pod blasting clinics were organized in Surry and Windsor, VA to help growers observe
and understand maturity, in particular for the most recent released genotypes from the PVQE program; Bailey II, Emery, and
Walton, and NC20.
In Jan 2021, PVQE 2020 data were included in two reports published online on the Virginia Cooperative Extension website. In
Feb 2021, information was presented to growers, shellers, processors, certified seed producers, and researchers during the
Virginia Peanut Production Annual Meeting, which usually counts over 100 attendees. In March, PVQE data was disseminated

to the PVQEAC followed on Sep 14 and 21 with two field tours; and, finally, in a series of in-person meetingswith farmers in Sep 2021.

Anco, D.J., Balota, M., Dunne, J.C., and Brown, N. 2021. Sound splits as influenced by seed size for runner and virginia
market type peanut shelled on a reciprocating sheller. Agronomy 2021, 11, 1896.
https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11091869.

Balota, M., Cazenave, A. B., Dunne, J., and Anco D., 2021. Peanut Variety and Quality Evaluation results II: 2020 quality
data*. Virginia Tech and Virginia Coop. Ext. Publ. AREC-309NP. 49 p.