‘Walton’ a New High-Oleic Virginia-Type Peanut

Early this year, ‘Walton’ peanut was jointly released by Virginia Tech and the University of Florida. Walton is a Virginia-type peanut (Arachis hypogaea L. subsp. hypogaea var. hypogaea) cultivar with similar good agronomic performance when compared with Bailey, Emery, and Bailey II under “normal” production (Table 1), but with superior performance than these cultivars under extreme water deficit conditions.  Seeds are elongated in shape and seed testa color is light pink to pink.  It has dark green foliage; an intermediate growth habit and the main stem is not distinguishable from the lateral branches.  Walton is a high-oleic cultivar with maturity similar to Virginia-type cultivars developed for the VC region. Breeder seed is being increased at the University of Florida in 2019, and more will be produced next year at the Tidewater AREC and in Florida. For commercial production, seed will become available at the earliest in 2021.

Table 1. Results of the Peanut Variety and Quality and Evaluation multi-state (VA, NC, SC), multi-location (5), multi-year (4) (2015-2018)

Variety Yield (lb/A) Crop value ($/A)
Walton 5334 ab 940.0 a
Bailey 5243 abc 920.5 ab
Bailey II 5515 a 978.1 a
Emery 5048 bc 892.5 abc
Sullivan 4876 c 831.6 bc
Wynne 4859 c 826.4 c
Mean 5146 898.2
P>F 0.0128 0.0072

More information it can be found here Walton’ a High Oleic Virginia-type Peanut. Walton will be presented at the VA Peanut Tour on July 30th, at Tidewater AREC.