Germplasm resources are the important basis of peanut biology research and breeding improvement. This paper reviews the research progress of peanut germplasm resources：（1）the research on the origin and classification of peanut at home and abroad；（2）the overview of peanut conservation in China and several other major countries；（3）a series of progress in the identification and evaluation of excellent peanut germplasm；（4）introducing the previous updates of peanut varieties in China and predicting the future development trend；（5）summarizing the main methods and achievements of peanut germplasm innovation in China；（6）introducing the important results of peanut genome research at home and abroad and prospecting their application；（7）the status quo of excellent gene mining in peanut. This paper points out that there are still some disputes about the origin of cultivated peanut，some problems exsit in peanut resource conservation，evaluation； germplasm innovation；gene exploration and some suggestions for solving these problems in the future are proposed. This paper is expected to provide useful information for the utilization of peanut germplasm resources and breeding improvement in the future.