¹ Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088, USA

Our previously study had showed that an allele of a specific AFLP marker is present only in two botanical varieties, fastigiata and vulgaris, within the subspecies of A. hypogaea. When alleles of this locus were sequenced, we detected a deletion of 12 nucleotides in allele b compared to allele a. A primer pair flanking the deletion site was designed and used to screen all the accessions studied. The frequency of allele b in botanical varieties fastigiata and vulgaris was 17% and 75%, respectively. This allele did not appear in botanical varieties hypogaea, hirsuta, peruviana and aequatoriana, while the allele a occurs in all six botanic varieties. The sequence tagged site (STS) was also used to investigate five wild species, A. monticola, A. batizocoi, A. duranensis, A. cardenasii, and A. ipaensis, which were assumed the progenitors of cultivated peanut. The result showed that none of wild species contains allele b. It is likely that allele b was not transmitted from wild progenitors. It may be a significance to explore whether this allele would have played a role in the evolution of cultivate peanut. Further study is needed to investigate whether there is any relationship between this STS and phenotypic traits and to establish the significance of this deletion on the phylogenetic relationship of peanut species.