Groundnut(Peanut) is an important and most valuable oil, food and feed crop which is grown in almost 100 countries all over the world.
Groundnut varieties with high yielding potential were developed and released for cultivation all over the world. These improved varieties are having different maturity durations and different specifically enhanced features like disease resistant, drought tolerable, increased oil content and improved quality trials for edible use.
Soil Selection for Sowing:
The most suitable soil for perfect cultivation of groundnut (peanut) is well drained sandy loam or sandy clay loam soil. For good germination of seeds, the soil should have pH ranges between 6.5 to 7 and the optimum soil temperature around 30 ̊C.
Being a legume, groundnut crops enrich the soil fertility naturally by fixing nitrogen and this feature plays a key role in crop rotation. Due to crop rotation the yield also increases by a considerable margin through decreased pests, weeds and diseases.
Manuring and Pod development:
Adequate levels of macronutrients such as phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and micronutrients should be provided by means of fertilizers to support the stable plant growth for better yield.
Flowering begins nearly 17 to 35 days after the emergence of seedling depending on the growing conditions. Self pollination occurs in the flower within 24 hours and then the peg and fertilized ovule carrying tip gets developed in 6-10 days. These pegs containing ovule grow towards the earth and develop pods below the earth and mature into healthy kernels.
Harvesting:
Groundnut Crops in India usually take 90-130 days to get ready for harvest.
Harvesting is one of the most important parts in groundnut cultivation. Cultivators should have the sound knowledge regarding growth and developmental stages of the peanut plant.
Groundnut plants continue to do flowering even during the pods developing underground. Due to this some pods mature and the recent pods will remain unripe. If the matured pods are not harvested at the right time they will start germinating underground and remain wasted results in loss.
Likewise if the plants are harvested too early, only limited pods are matured and most of the pods are in the developing stage with some of them not reaching the ground at all. So the optimum stage suitable for harvesting in order to get the maximum yield should be calculated by the cultivars.
For harvesting, the whole plant is getting uprooted. To ease this process, the cultivated land should be kept moist by sprinkling water or do surface irrigation 2-3 days before harvest in order to loosen the soil.
After that, the groundnut plants are pulled out manually or cutting the roots of the plants and pulling it to the surface using machines. Once the pods are pulled out to the surface, allow it to dry under sunlight for 3-4 days to reduce its moisture content. After drying it completely, the pods are removed from the plant and the raw groundnuts are stored in a clean and dry condition.
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