... your place for oat information.

How about a "Ta-da!" list? Let’s start with some actual “to do” items first, though.

This is a reminder that our next “Speaking of Oats…” webinar will be held on Tuesday, February 22nd at 5:30 pm (17:30 hr) EST (UTC -5). Allan Rattey, from InterGrain, Australia, will talk to us about “Australian oat breeding at InterGrain: Building upon public-funded breeding successes”. Please register here. As always, you can check the time offset here.

Many meetings continue to be modified or cancelled because of the ongoing COVID-19 situation.  Please continue to check the calendar for updates.  (And let me know if I’ve missed something!)

For those of you interested in organic oat supply chains, Canadian Organic Growers is presenting a webinar that might be of interest this Friday, February 11th, at noon EST (UTC -5). 

To paraphrase Robert Burns, “the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”, and that’s exactly what happened with yesterday’s “Speaking of Oats…” webinar. Interesting that it was also Burns Day!

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating today, January 7th, and Happy New Year!

The Oat Newsletter calendar has been updated, with some new events being added and some existing ones being modified or cancelled.

Well, look what I found at my local grocery store in Ottawa, Canada – Oat Nog! It’s pretty good, too, with lots of nutmeg. (Look up "Egg Nog", if you're not familiar with the traditional Christmas drink.) Here in Ottawa the chances are quite high that we’ll have a white Christmas with a fair amount of snow this year, but I’m sure the experience in Perth, Australia, will be quite different....

Here's yet another opportunity to work with the USDA-ARS, this time on oat and wheat improvement in St. Paul, MN:

The USDA-ARS in Fargo, ND, is hiring a Food Technologist/Research Chemist to study oat quality. The announcement can be viewed here. Please note that this position is only open to US citizens and nationals. The deadline to apply is Friday, December 3rd. That may be extended for an additional two weeks if there are not enough qualified candidates.

There is a new Research Leader for the Cereal Crops Research Unit at USDA-ARS in Fargo.  Please welcome Dr. Rajeev Gupta to our community! .

The annotations for version 2 of the OT3098 genome sequence are now available on Graingenes! An article by Mandy Waters describing the annotation process and listing the available files is in the "Research Reports" section.

The next “Speaking of Oats…” (SOO) webinar will be held Tuesday, November 23rd, at 2:00 pm (1400 hrs) Eastern time (EST - Canada/USA).

**Please note that this is not our usual day or time**