Food-Fodder Traits in Groundnut

Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) is one of the key crops of the semi-arid tropics. It is commonly cultivated as a food-feed crop that provides pods for human food and haulms for livestock feeding (Larbi et al. 1999, Omokanye et al. 2001). From farmer participatory studies in the Deccan plateau of India, Rama Devi et al. (2000) concluded that food from grain/pods and fodder from the crop residues almost equally contribute to livelihoods in mixed-crop livestock systems. It was because of this important dual-purpose usage of groundnut that the groundnut improvement group of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and livestock nutrition group of the International Livestoc