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Are you looking for a job? Do you like to learn new things and meet new people? Would you like to win a prize? Do you like answering questions?

The job opening is for a Collections Biologist at Plant Gene Resources of Canada with Axel Diederichsen. The deadline to apply is September 1st!

This update is brought to you by the letters I, O, C, D, L, and S....

First, a new update concerning the IOC (International Oat Conference) in Perth, Australia, this October has been sent around to those of you on their mailing list. If you're not on the list, you can join here or take a look at the IOC website.

Time is moving on, and the absolute, final deadline for submitting abstracts to the International Oat Conference in Perth is July 20th. There are also new bursaries for students who wish to make presentations! More information on that is here and the abstract submission instructions and forms are here.

Quality has always been important when it comes to oats and oat research, and now we should consider oat 'qualitEEE' as well! The 'EEE' stands for 'Engage, Enable, and Evolve'.

Last week, the paper describing the sequencing of the hexaploid oat variety 'Sang', along with accessions of Avena longiglumis and A. insularis, was published in the journal 'Nature'. Congratulations to Nadia Kamal, Nikos Renhuldt, et al., for a fabulous achievement! A plain-language summary of the article was also published in 'Nature'.

We have concrete word now that the new postdoc position in Melania Figueroa’s lab at CSIRO in Australia has been approved! The advertisement has been posted here. The successful applicant "will undertake research in preventing losses in oat production due to the impact of oat crown rust disease". The deadline for applications is June 13th.

The first International Day of Plant Health will be Thursday, May 12th! One of the events planned is a webinar hosted by the FAO.

We tend to consider oats as being mainly for food or feed purposes, but they’re good for other things as well – like ingredients for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. You can hear more about that at our next “Speaking of Oats…” (SOO) webinar, which will be held on Tuesday, April 26th, at 11:00 am EDT. Cark Maunsell, from Oat Cosmetics in the UK, will be our speaker, and you can register here.

The abstract submission deadline for the International Oat Conference in Perth, Australia, this October has been extended to May 15th.  The abstract templates and instructions for submission are on the OAT2022 website.

Looking forward to hearing about everyone’s work!

The next “Speaking of Oats…” webinar will be held this Thursday, March 17th, at 11:00 am EDT (UTC -4). Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada oat breeder Weikai Yan will be discussing “Mega-environment analysis and breeding for mega-environment specific oat cultivars for Canada”.