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Drought during the pre‐flowering stage can increase yield of peanut. There is limited information on genotypic variation for tolerance to and recovery from pre‐flowering drought (PFD) and more importantly the physiological traits underlying genotypic variation. The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of moisture stress during the pre‐flowering phase on pod yield and to understand some of the physiological responses underlying genotypic variation in response to and recovery from PFD. A glasshouse and field experiments were conducted at Khon Kaen University, Thailand. The glasshouse experiment was a randomized complete block design consisting of two watering regimes, i.e. fully‐irrigated control and 1/3 available soil water from emergence to 40 days after emergence followed by adequate water supply, and 12 peanut genotypes. The field experiment was a split‐plot design with two watering regimes as main‐plots, and 12 peanut genotypes as sub‐plots. Measurements of N2 fixation, leaf area (LA) were made in both experiments. In addition, root growth was measured in the glasshouse experiment. Imposition of PFD followed by recovery resulted in an average increase in yield of 24 % (range from 10 % to 57 %) and 12 % (range from 2 % to 51 %) in the field and glasshouse experiments, respectively. Significant genotypic variation for N2 fixation, LA and root growth was also observed after recovery. The study revealed that recovery growth following release of PFD had a stronger influence on final yield than tolerance to water deficits during the PFD. A combination of N2 fixation, LA and root growth accounted for a major portion of the genotypic variation in yield (r = 0.68–0.93) suggesting that these traits could be used as selection criteria for identifying genotypes with rapid recovery from PFD. A combined analysis of glasshouse and field experiments showed that LA and N2 fixation during the recovery had low genotype × environment interaction indicating potential for using these traits for selecting genotypes in peanut improvement programs.

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