ABSTRACT
Increasingly, the health benefits of groundnuts (peanuts) have been illustrated with frequent consumption linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and numerous other major chronic diseases (Ros, 2010; Bao et al., 2013). Groundnut is a nutrient-dense food rich in digestible protein, unsaturated fatty acids (e.g. oleic acid), minerals (e.g. copper and manganese), vitamins (e.g. biotin, niacin, folate, B1), fibre, and polyphenolic antioxidants (e.g. p-coumaric acid and resveratrol) (Ros, 2010; Settaluri et al., 2012; Craft et al., 2010). Indeed, Plumpy’nut, a groundnutbased paste, is one of the most widely used ready-to-use therapeutic foods to treat severely malnourished children in developing countries (Guiman and Guiman, 2012). New groundnut technologies with improved traits are routinely introduced into production and can be rapidly scaled up to meet demand.
