Groundnut the premier oilseed in the Country and continues to be important one among the annual Oilseeds cultivated in India. Looking to its importance and potential for further contribution to the oilseeds kitty, groundnut outreach research activities were delineated from the Directorate of Oilseeds Research (DOR), Hyderabad during 1992 and a separate of All India Coordinated Research Project on Groundnut (AICRP-Groundnut) was established during VIII-Five year plan. To ensure effective interaction with the scientists engaged in basic and strategic research on groundnut at the national level, the Project Coordinating Unit was placed at the National Research Centre for Groundnut (NRCG), Junagadh. Dr. M.S. Basu was assigned the responsibility of the Project Coordinator (Groundnut) by the ICAR since the inception of the AICRP-Groundnut.
With this development, the AICRP-Groundnut Research activities were restructured, reorganized and strengthened to deal with the Kharif and Rabi, Summer and Spring requirements separately through its 20 regular centres with a strength of 46 Scientists
Unlike other AICRPs, the project on groundnut had a unique distinction of integration of international collaborative projects in key areas namely drought and aflatoxin with ACIAR (A$ 3.0 million) and UNDP (Rs. 10.0 million). In addition, the AICRP-Groundnut had a couple of collaborative projects with ICRISAT in the areas of disease resistance, virus monitoring, high yield, earliness and confectionery quality, marker-assisted breeding on a cost-sharing basis.