The year 2025 marks 75 years since the Oat Newsletter was established! While the first issue was not actually published until February 1st, 1951, it was at the National Oat Conference Committee meeting on November 2nd, 1950, that the Chairman "called upon Neal Jensen of Cornell University to outline his idea for an oat newsletter to be published once a year on the results obtained and observations made by oat breeders of the country".

The chairman at that time was Hazel Shands, whom I had the pleasure to meet in the 1990’s. I have always believed that history and context are important, and there is a wealth of information in the old volumes of the newsletters. Every issue published before the establishment of this website (2014) is available in the archives.

Mike McMullen was editor of the newsletter from 1984-1990. He retired from North Dakota State University on September 1st of this year. More about Mike’s career and retirement can be found here, in the "Hall of Fame" section of the newsletter, where he appears twice, having also received the "Distinguished Service to Oat Improvement" Award in 2014. Congratulations, Mike!

Congratulations also to Jack Dawes! He retired recently from being an agricultural broadcaster in western Canada. Jack did quite a lot with the Prairie Oat Growers Association (POGA) and was inducted into Saskatchewan's Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2022.

Speaking of POGA, the November issue of the "Oat Scoop" newsletter is now available. In this issue, you can find a number of final research project summaries, as well as descriptions of some new projects that are getting underway.

Those summaries are more detailed, but one project much in the news lately has been PanOat. A list of many of the articles in the popular press describing the pangenome and global oat diversity work is available here, in the "Community News" section. Take note, too, that genome browsers for the lines sequenced for PanOat are now available on GrainGenes.

Earlier this year, Juan Arbaelez was featured in the popular press as well. He recently took over as chair of the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee in the USA, which is "helping the next generation of breeders build a stronger foundation — one that doesn’t leave behind the crops, programs, or people who need it most".

Over in Iceland, Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson was interviewed for two articles (1 and 2) about the Oat Frontiers project, which is looking at breeding better oats for the more extreme climates in northern Europe.

In warmer climes, crown rust can be a big issue, and GRDC in Australia has made a podcast that describes how people should collect rust samples properly.

Rust is a huge issue in Brazil, but the latest cultivar from UFRGS, URS Reponte (webpage in Portuguese), still has some susceptibility. However, it has also been shown to yield in the range of seven tonnes/ha, as can be seen in this video from Liuz Federizzi.

As you all know, Pucón, Chile, on the other side of the South American continent, will host next year’s International Oat Conference (OAT2026/IOC12). A kick-off event was held on-line a few weeks ago. If you missed it, you can watch the recording on YouTube. More details about the conference, including instructions for abstract submissions and sending seed for the demo plots, is now available on the IOC website. Registration for OAT2026 is not yet open, but you can pre-register here. Questions can be submitted via the "Contact" page. Aside from having the website and a YouTube channel, OAT2026 also has a presence on 'X' and LinkedIn.

The Oat Newsletter now also has a presence on LinkedIn. For various reasons, the account has been set up under the name of my alter-ego: Avena Neatby. Once my stint as newsletter editor has ended, the account can then be transferred to the new editor (think "The Dread Pirate Roberts"....). Nothing has been posted yet, but you can follow the account here.

Someone else who is on LinkedIn is Alf Ceplitis, who recently announced the formation of his new company, R2 Breeding Solutions. Best of luck with the new company, Alf!

Another form of communication available to the community is the "Speaking of Oats..." webinar series. The next webinar will be held on January 20th, 2026, at 11 am EST. Two students from the lab of Ali Babar at the University of Florida will be speaking:

• Janam Acharya, "Genetics of Stem and Crown Rust Resistance in Southern US Oat Germplasm", and
• Samuel Adewale, "Integrating genomics, enviromics and high-throughput phenotyping tools for improving biomass and grain yield in southern US oat germplasm".

Registration will be open soon!

In the meantime, I would like to wish all of our Jewish friends and colleagues a Happy Hanukkah this week!

Christmas is also coming, and one image that many of us have in our heads at this time of year is that of dancing sugar plums. If you wish to use a sugar substitute in your sweets, be aware that ARCITEKBio Ltd., a company spun off from IBERS in the UK, is now using materials such as oat straw to produce xylitol.

Oats can feature in your holiday festivities in many ways – check out the "Recipes" section for some ideas! Oats are a lot more versatile that people think, although I’m not sure that I would be comfortable wearing this dress....

I leave you with a photo of my office door, which is decorated with a collage of old images I had created on x-ray film many years ago when we used to use RFLPs for genetic mapping. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!