Designing effective groundnut breeding strategies through farmers-breeder interactions in Northern Nigeria

Nigeria is the largest groundnut producing country in West and Central Africa and the crop is grown largely under small-holder system and rain-fed conditions. Demand for improved groundnut varieties has been increasing over the years making it imperative to develop varieties suitable to different agro-ecological zones of Nigeria. ICRSAT has been working with national partners to develop improved groundnut varieties. Results of the participatory varietal selection and paired-wise ranking exercises revealed that resistance to pests and diseases, early maturity, pod yield, oil yield, haulm yield, pod and kernel features, and drought tolerance are the important groundnut traits to the farmers indicating a perfect alignment of farmers preference with breeders concerns on the development of improved groundnut varieties in Northern Nigeria.