Low yield and poor quality of peanut production due to low soil fertility, and environmental pollution as a result of disorderly discharge of animal excretion from large-scale animal farms have become two main problems in the red soil area, of Jiangxi Province. Some researchers have proposed application of animal excretions as organic manure into farmlands and hold that it a win-win solution to the problems. However, some scientists have proved that long-term excessive application of pig manure will bring about heavy metal accumulation in the soil and pollution of groundwater with nitrate; and some others have found that application of pig manure, if low in rate, not only increases labor cost but also has little effect on yield and quality of crops. Hence, how to make use of organic manure properly to optimize crops in yield and quality without any risk of environmental pollution has become a pressing issue. For that a field experiment was carried out at the Yingtan National Agroecosystem Field Experiment Station located in Yujiang County, Jiangxi Province, a subtropical area of China, to tackle this problem. The experiment was designed to have six treatments, i.e. no fertilizer (CK), conventional chemical fertilization (T0), 80% chemical fertilizer N plus 20% manure N (T20), 65% chemical fertilizer N plus 35% manure N (T35), 50% chemical fertilizer N plus 50% manure N (T50), and 35% chemical fertilizer N plus 65% manure N (T65), with a view to exploring effects of application of organic manure, relative to its rate, on physiological characteristics, yield and quality of peanut and further-on an optimal combination of chemical fertilizer with organic manure for peanut production in this area. So this study not only has its important theoretical significance in enriching the physiological study on nutrition and quality of peanut, but also possesses some practical meaning in reducing the waste of organic manure resources and alleviating the potential risk of application of organic manure polluting the environment. Results of the field experiment are encouraging. (1) Combined application of chemical fertilizer with organic manure could significantly enhance the anti-aging enzyme system of peanut leaves. With the rising proportion of organic manure, activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and content of soluble protein increased first and then declined. Peaks were found in Treatment T35, being 38.28%, 9.97%, 8.31% and 12.38%, higher than their respective ones, in Treatment T0. However, the content of malondialdehyde (MDA) displayed a reverse trend, decliing first and then rising with the application rate of organic manure. It was the lowest in Treatment T50, being 5.03% lower than that in Treatment T0. (2) Combined application also had some significant effects on peanut physiological properties. With the rising proportion of organic manure in combination, net photosynthetic rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (Gs) and chlorophyll content Chl(a+b) gradually increased first and then declining with the proportion of organic manure going up (p<0.05), being much higher in Treatments T35 and T50 than in the others. Particularly, in Treatment T35, Pn, Gs, Chl(a b), CAT and SOD in leaves was 8.89%, 10.58%, 18.58%, 8.31% and 38.28% higher than their respective ones in Treatment T0 at the pod setting stage. (3) Combined application had significant effects of improving vegetative growth and yield of peanut. The higher the proportion of organic manure, the better the plant traits. The peanut plants in Treatment T65 ranked first in main stem height and lateral branch length, being 8.01cm and 11.2cm higher or longer than those in Treatment T0, while the plants in Treatment T35 were the highest in pod yield, kernel yield, pods per plant, per hundred kernel weight, being 20.14%, 26.92%, 27.87% and 7.08%, respectively, higher than their respective ones in Treatment T0. (4) Combined application could significantly improve the quality of peanut. Treatment T35 increased contents of fat, protein and soluble sugar in kernels by 3.58%, 5.03% and 12.16%, respectively as compared with Treatment T0. Based on the above-described findings, it can be concluded that on the condition that equivalent N, P, K nutrients are supplied, the application of fertilizer containing 35% of N in the form of organic manure can not only turn large volumes of animal excretions into organic manure,, but also reduce the use of chemical fertilizer and improve the yield, quality and physiological properties of peanut in red soil areas, which means a great augmentation of economic value and social benefit.