... your place for oat information.

No need to panic - the new research reports I’ve long been promising have now been posted! One is a summary of the PanOat pangenome paper just published in Nature that describes the sequencing and annotation of 33 oat genomes, as well as a study of their transcriptomes. A milestone to be sure! The companion paper on global oat diversity among more than 9000 oat lines has also been summarized. Other summaries highlight work done by the group at IBERS and groups led by Igor Loskutov (two articles),Yong-Bi Fu, and Jaswinder Singh.

Please take note that POGA (Prairie Oat Growers Association) is warning potential AGM attendees of a scam involving booking rooms at the hotel where the meeting will be held on December 3rd. More details, plus the full agenda for the meeting and other information, can be found on the AGM webpage.

It is said that once something is on the internet it never goes away, and that seemed to be true recently when someone told me that they had used the "Wayback Machine" to find some information while the newsletter server was down! So, we’re going to go back in time also, to look at more material that, under normal circumstances, would have been posted several months ago.

I'm very pleased to tell you that the Oat Newsletter is back on-line, after the GrainGenes servers were hacked back in May. Many thanks to Steve Michel, Taner Sen, and others at GrainGenes for getting us back up and running! There is still work to be done, however. In particular, the OatMail system is still not functioning. You can send any messages you want shared directly to me at oatnewsletter@gmail.com.

This year has brought much change, and that includes some sad news. Ken Armstrong, a scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Ottawa for 35 years, passed away a few weeks ago. Ken’s speciality was cytogenetics, and, among other things, he was a part of the infamous Quaker Oats Consortium in the 1990s. You can read more about Ken’s legacy in his obituary, which has been added to the “Hall of Fame” section in the newsletter.

Happy 2025! It’s time to open another volume of "Research Reports". In volume 61, we had eight articles, as well as links to the recording from one "Speaking of Oats" webinar and links to the abstracts from the 2024 American Oat Workers' Conference (AOWC). Please send your submissions for volume 62 to oatnewsletter@gmail.com.

"...is some black oat groats", or so the song goes (not really). Alexander Rybalka, from Ukraine, is seeking oats with back caryopses. Not black hulls; black caryopses (groats). If you know of any, please get in touch with him. Details are in this article.

Happy World Porridge Day! The tenth of October was designated World Porridge Day to celebrate the wonders of oatmeal and help raise funds for the charity Mary's Meals.

That applies to the season here in Canada, but also to the members of the committees (including the Oat Newsletter committee) overseen by the American Oat Workers (AOW) group! The 2024 American Oat Workers' Conference (AOWC) was held in Saskatoon, SK, Canada, in July, and there is a lot of information to share. First, though, I will let you know that I was re-elected Editor of the Oat Newsletter for another four years.

…and “nothing so gentle as real strength”. Those words, from St. Francis de Sales, could certainly be used to describe Howard Rines, who passed away after a long illness on May 23rd. Howard is another of those people I met through being a part of the Quaker Oats Consortium in the 1990’s. He was a lovely man, and an excellent scientist. He will be sorely missed by many.