Chemical and Physical Properties of Sri Lankan Medium Seeded Groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea L)

Physical properties of commonly grown Sri Lanka groundnuts cultivars and promising accession varied considerably and numbers of kernels, pod beak, reticulation, testa colour, and shell out percentage have differences among groundnuts. However, they showed more similarities for most of the characters. Moisture (5.4-8.4%), crude protein (18.7-28.5%), lipid (43.4-53.0%), ash (4.4-5.8%), carbohydrates (9.3-18.2%) and energy level (565.7-618.2kcal) contents varied considerably. Quality and flavor of edible groundnuts and its products are affected by fatty acid composition of oil. Lipids were mainly composed of mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids (>78% of the total lipids). Fatty acid composition analysis indicated that oleic acid (C18:1) was the main constituent of monounsaturated lipids in all seed samples. With the exception of ANKG1, linoleic acid (C18:2) was the major polyunsaturated fatty acid. The saturated fatty acids (Palmatic, Stearic acid and behenic acid) in different cultivars ranged between 10.2 to 15.6%, 2.5 to 6.3% and 1.1 to 5.3%, respectively. Differences among cultivars for oleic acid exhibited significance which ranged between 38.2 to 47.4%. Similarly, cultivars differed statistically for linoleic acid which showed a range of 23.1 to 38.7%. Oleic to linoleic acid ratio was differed and all the released varieties were below the minimum standard level of 1.6, whereas ICGV 86590 and ICGV 00073 showed higher O/L ratio of 1.94 and 1.75 respectively.