Features and characteristics:

• Malawi groundnuts have different sizes and colours in respective to the varieties
• Generally groundnuts grown in Malawi are characterised with high yielding virginia bunch

Varieties:

• Charimbana
• CG7/Red skins (ICGV-SM 90704 (Nsinjiro))
• JL 24 (kakoma)
• IGC 12991 (Baka)
• Chalimbana
• Chatimbana
• Mawanga
• Manipintar
• RG1

Benefits:

• Groundnuts groundnut fixes atmospheric nitrogen in soils and thus improves soil fertility and saves fertilizer costs in subsequent crops,
• Groundnuts form an important component of both rural and urban diet through the provision of valuable protein, edible oil, fats, energy, minerals, and vitamins.
• In livestock-farming communities, groundnut can be used as a source of livestock feed and increases livestock productivity as the groundnut haulm and seed cake are rich in digestible crude protein content

Role and Status in Malawi Export:

• 10 percent of the total production is exported
• Malawi share of Groundnuts exports to the world has been increasing over the period of the last five years. In 2013 Malawi share of exports grew to 2.6% from 1.4 % in 2012.

Groundnuts Producers

• Smallholder Farmers
• Afrinut (NASFAM)

Location, Topography

• The central and southern region Agricultural Development Divisions (ADDs) of Kasungu, Lilongwe, Machinga and Blantyre accounts for 75% of the total groundnuts production area.
• Groundnuts is mainly a rain fed crop

Production and Supply Capacity

• The production of groundnuts has had an upward trend from 275,000 MT in 2009 to 380,000 MT in 2013.
• The increase can be attributed to the adoption of new varieties by the smallholders. Malawi has excess production capacity as it is only depending on rain fed system. If this capacity can be exploited there will be excess supply capacity.