Biodiversity as a component of the Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program

Tim Williams

Program Director, Peanut CRSP

University of Georgia

Since it’s inception in 1982 the Peanut CRSP has had a wide range of activities that have had an impact on biodiversity preservation. In some cases these were by design in others they were coincidental benefits that resulted from other objectives. Direct biodiversity related research has been the preservation, description and collection of the wild relatives of the peanut. This was undertaken to allow the introgression of genes for desirable attributes found only in the wild species. This effort has resulted in the development of lines of groundnut with resistances to nematodes, foliar diseases; and with maturity characteristics that improve the adaptation of the cultivated species to drier and less certain areas. Integrated pest management (IPM) has also contributed to the preservation of biodiversity through the major reductions in pesticide applications that have occurred in the USA. A very clear contribution to the preservation of biodiversity was realized in Belize where a community that the CRSP was working with abandoned slash and burn agriculture as a result of the development of peanuts as a cash and market crop. In the 14 years that the program was active the people found that they could make a satisfactory living growing peanuts, processing them through a range of value adding steps and selling them in urban areas. Housing and the cultivated areas became permanent allowing the forest areas to be preserved. While unintended the case demonstrated the value of economic development as a tool for preserving biodiversity. Presently we have a comparable program in Guyana which is hoping to persuade ameri-indians that lands can be sustainably productive with modest inputs.