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. There ia also a translation of an article that describes some work done on-farm using Steffen Beuch's 'Scotty' oat.

Mild panic did ensue when there were issues with the server hosting the Oat Newsletter earlier this year, and we have actually lost one of our communication platforms. The OatMail service can no longer be maintained, unfortunately. If anyone has other ideas for how to set up a system where group members can participate in discussions, please let me know. Something email-based (and free to use) would be preferable.

The Oat Global group is resurrecting the "Speaking of Oats..." webinar series. They envision having the first three sessions present the work of breeding students and postdocs from around the world, with two presenters in each session. The tentative date for the first session is the first week of December. If you or someone you know would like to make a presentation, please get in touch with Pablo Olivera Firpo from Oat Global. The deadline to respond is November 14th. Anyone who would like to present other types of work in the future should also contact Pablo.

One of the best ways to communicate the work of the community, of course, is through meetings and conferences. Planning for the International Oat Conference next year is well underway and the website will be updated soon with all the details, including those for a kick-off event to be held on-line in November. Other events are listed in the calendar and in the "Community News" section.

At the beginning of this month, chefs from around the world got together for the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Championships in Carrbridge, Scotland. The winner this year was Sven Seljom from Norway, who used Norwegian black oats to make his porridge. (I wonder which accession? And ploidy level?) The best speciality porridge category was won by Caroline Velik from Australia, who made "jaffles". Congratulations to both of them! If you live in the UK or Ireland, the "Golden Spurtle" movie can now be viewed in its entirety on Apple TV, YouTube, Sky Store, Prime Video, or Rakuten TV.

Speaking of Scotland, I mentioned Alison Kay's course on fermenting oats previously, and she has a new post about sowans, another Scottish dish made with oats.

Now it's the end of October and time for Hallowe'en. Many of the associated traditions can be traced back to Celtic culture in Scotland and Ireland. Trick or treat? Don't panic - digging into the fuarag is all good fun!