Posted on April, 14, 2023 at 09:45 am
Farmers around the world grow peanuts because the plant adapts to poor soils and produces a crop even as droughts become more common. Peanuts are shelf-stable, nutritious, don’t require expensive fertilizer and people like to eat them. Smallholder farmers around the world grow the crop on modest plots and cook the nuts into traditional dishes or sell the crop for money to send their kids to school.
To leverage the power of this unique crop, the U.S. government partners with the University of Georgia to solve problems faced by farmers. On April 12, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and UGA announced a five-year extension of their collaborative research and outreach work in peanut innovation.
The $15 million grant from USAID will allow the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, which is headquartered in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES), to scale up the findings from previous research and get the technology into farmers’ fields.
“We are so pleased that USAID has chosen to continue their funding of the Peanut Innovation Lab for another five years, ” said CAES Dean and Director Nick T. Place. “Our mission in CAES is to support the creation of sustainable food systems both here and abroad – the important work done through this program is a critical part of that mission and we are excited to see what results come out of the Peanut Innovation Lab during this next funding cycle.”
While UGA has hosted international peanut research for decades, the Peanut Innovation Lab embarked on the most recent round of projects in 2018. The lab has managed two dozen research projects led by UGA scientists as well as researchers at a dozen other U.S. universities, including Virginia Tech, North Carolina State University, Penn State, Texas Tech, University of California-Santa Barbara and others.
Many of the research findings apply throughout the world, including here in the U.S., but the field work is performed in Senegal and Ghana in Western Africa, and Uganda and Malawi in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Some of the lab’s research involves making stronger peanut plants — varieties that can survive disease or drought — and other studies focus on creating small machines or educational programs to help farmers and processors, designing products to bring the nutritional benefits of peanuts to consumers, or understanding the gender and age dynamics that lead farmers to make the decisions that they do.
Source: UGA Today