... your place for oat information.

Let’s begin with the item that has the closest deadline – Grain Farmers of Ontario has put out a call for proposals. The deadline for receiving Letters of Intent is next Wednesday, July 15th.

NordGen has also put out a call for proposals. Until September 15th, companies and public institutions can submit proposals for projects aimed at adapting environmentally and climate-friendly crops by using plant genetic resources.

PepsiCo has just announced the release of the full genome sequence for the hexaploid oat line OT3098. This is exciting for many reasons, not the least of which is that the sequence has been made publicly available on the GrainGenes website! You can find more information about this effort and links to the data in the article in the "Research Reports" section.

We've been having some technical issues with the newsletter, and ended up losing the curator's email account in the process. The new email address is oatnewsletter@gmail.com.

While that whole mess has been a real field day(!), there's also a virtual one coming up on June 24th. It's being sponsored by the Practical Farmers of Iowa, and further information can be found here.

More news to come soon!

The last newsletter update brought the unfortunate news that the 11th International Oat Conference was being postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, many events have been cancelled outright, and others have been postponed. The 5th Genomic Selection Course, for example, will now be held in September instead of June.

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the International Oat Conference committee and local organizers have decided to postpone the 11th International Oat Conference in Perth, Australia to 11-14 October, 2021. Please see the letter from Larissa Taylor and the 11th IOC website for more information.

Twenty-eight years ago today, on February 24th, 1992, I (Charlene Wight) joined what is now the Ottawa Research and Development Centre of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) to work on oat genomics. Over those 28 years I have met many amazing people in the broader oat community, including Bruce Roskens, who recently retired from Grain Millers, Inc.. A summary of Bruce's career, which includes his being presented with the Award for Distinguished Service to Oat Improvement, has been added to the "Hall of Fame" section under "Retirements".

So is it the Year of the Rat? Or the Year of the Oat? How about both?

First, I would like to say Happy Year of the Rat to those of you celebrating Lunar New Year, which is this Saturday, January 25th. Saturday is also Burns Night for those of us with a Scottish background, so be sure to raise a glass to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns and indulge in some haggis or cranachan, both of which are made with oats.

Wishing everyone the best and most relaxing of holidays and a fabulous 2020!

Find this year's holiday card here!

There are many oat-related events coming up in 2020! The calendar has just been updated to include two Practical Farmers of Iowa meetings, the Saaten Union Oat Convention in Braunschweig, Germany, the NAMA Spring Conference in Florida, and a plant and animal breeding course being offered by the University of Edinburgh, SRUC, and CGIAR in Edinburgh, Scotland. Please check the bottom of the home page and the rest of the calendar to see all of the events listed and take note of upcoming deadlines. The deadline for registering for the Saaten Union event, for example, is December 16th!

If you follow long distance running, you’ll know that everyone has been all a-flutter because Eliud Kipchoge recently ran a marathon in under two hours. How did he do it? "Kipchoge got out of his hotel bed at 4:50 a.m. and had oatmeal for breakfast."