Seven peanut breeding lines of the Instituto Agronômico breeding program, selected for pod yield and disease resistance, were evaluated for quantitative and qualitative attributes of oil production. Two field experiments, located at Campinas and Ribeirão Preto Experiment Station, State of São Paulo, Brazil, were carried out, in a complete randomized block design with four replications. The means of each genotype were tested against a known control, cultivars Tatu. In each plot, the following characters were evaluated: pod yield, shelling percentage and seed oil content. Oil yield/ha was estimated from (he above data. Oil quality was evaluated by determining the content of the following fatty acids: palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, arachidic, cicosenoic and behenic. The percentage of saturated fatty acids, as well as the oleic/linoleic ratio, were also, estimated. Regarding the yield of pods, five of the breeding lines out-yielded the control in 30% to 50%, in the mean of the two experiments. This superiority was even larger, from 46% to 67%, when the variable oil yield/ha was considered, once additional gains were also observed for shelling percentage and oil content. The oil of lines 21/3, 21/5, 21/6, 55/9, 55/16, 65/3 and 65/4 showed average values of oleic acid content and oleic/linoleic ratio significantly higher than those of the control, which indicates a higher resistance to oxidation.
peanut; breeding lines; oil; yield; quality