Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) breeding programs with a goal of rapid cultivar development have used mainly elite breeding lines and cultivars, which has resulted in the development of breeding materials with a narrow genetic base. Utilization of exotic germplasm resources in breeding programs is needed to enhance the diversity of cultivars.

Scientific plant breeding and its need for large variability, concern about potential loss of variability, and nonavailability of low cost tools to identify similarities or differences among accessions led genebanks to hold large germplasm collections.

Core collections, generally contain about 10% of total accessions, represent the genetic variability of entire germplasm collection, and have been suggested as a way to enhance use of genetic resources in crop improvement. The objective of this study was to develop a peanut mini core subset. The peanut core subset was evaluated for morphological, agronomic, and quality traits in the rainy and postrainy seasons. Ward’s method of clustering was used to separate core collection accessions into groups of similar accessions. A mini core subset consisting of 184 accessions was selected. Newman Keuls’ test for means, Levene’s test for variances, and chi-square test for frequency distribution analysis for different traits indicated that the variation available in the core collection has been preserved in the mini core subset. This mini core subset will enhance exploitation of peanut genetic resources.