Scientists have engineered a groundnut variety as heart-healthy as olive oil — and a fraction of the price.
Cooking oil in India is both a staple and a health dilemma. Olive oil — celebrated for its heart-protective oleic acid — retails at ₹800 to ₹1,200 per litre, placing it firmly out of reach for most households. Meanwhile, cardiovascular disease continues its quiet rise across the country. The question scientists at ICRISAT and ICAR set out to answer was deceptively simple: what if India’s most familiar oilseed crop could do what olive oil does?
The answer arrived in 2020 with the release of two new groundnut varieties — Girnar 4 and Girnar 5. Developed using advances in genomics, these varieties push oleic acid content from a typical 48% up to roughly 80%, dramatically reducing LDL-linked fatty acids in the process. The science, in other words, rewired the peanut at a molecular level.
“The breeding was driven by consumer needs, not the lab.” — Dr Janila Pasupuleti, ICRISAT
But a better peanut on paper means little without farmers willing to grow it and markets willing to buy it. That is where the story gets interesting. Gujarat farmers, partnering with agro-processor Khedut Feeds and Foods, scaled up seed multiplication across two seasons. Global peanut trader AgroCrops built market linkages and paid premium prices to reduce risk for early adopters. A startup called Navirah cold-pressed the oil and got it onto supermarket shelves in Rajkot and Ahmedabad.
The result is a product that sits between cheap refined oils and expensive imports — recognisable, affordable, and meaningfully better for the heart. An added bonus: high oleic oil’s extended shelf life cuts waste across the supply chain, benefiting snack makers and consumers alike.
It is a rare story in agricultural science — one where the lab, the field, and the kitchen shelf connect in a straight, unbroken line.
-Rashmi Kumari
