Buckle up, people, there’s a lot of news! Let’s begin with some events coming up in the next little while:

• Healthy Oats is organising an online Industry Day workshop from 1:30 - 4:30 pm GMT on December 12th. Those interested in participating should contact chanemouga.arunachalam1@ucd.ie.
• On December 14th, from 11:00 am – noon AWST (UTC +8), AEGIC in Australia will be presenting a webinar focussed on South-East Asia: "Australian oats – beyond the breakfast table".
• The next day, December 15th, from 11:00 am – noon EST (UTC -5), Jason Fiedler will be discussing the new SNP chip: "A multi-species, low cost, genome wide genotyping platform to support molecular breeding in small grains".
• Plant and Animal Genome (PAG) 30 will take place in San Diego, CA, USA, from January 13-18. A workshop on the genomics of "Oats, wild and cultivated" will take place on the 14th.

As you all know, the 11th International Oat Conference (IOC) was held in Perth, Australia, in October. Many thanks to the organizers for hosting such a successful conference! That was quite the challenge, not only because of COVID-19 delays, but also because this was the first hybrid meeting, with people attending both in-person and on-line!

All of the IOC sessions were recorded. If you paid to access them, please make sure to watch the videos before mid-December. Anyone can access the program and abstracts here.

You can also take a look at some of the photos from the conference on Facebook. They will be uploaded to the newsletter photo gallery soon. If you have any photos to add, please send them to me at oatnewsletter@gmail.com!

The minutes from the IOC business meeting will also be uploaded soon. At that meeting, Steffen Beuch was elected as Chair of the IOC for the next four years. Congratulations, Steffen! A message from Steffen to the oat community is on the IOC page. I (Charlene Wight) was elected as IOC secretary. Thank you to everyone who supported my nomination!

Two groups are bidding to host the next IOC meeting in 2026: one from Germany and one from Chile. You can hear the presentations and see the slide decks on the IOC page. Unfortunately, the videos do not show the slides being presented, so you’ll need to open two browser windows and scroll through the slides while the videos are playing. The IOC country representatives will be contacting their constituents regarding which venue should be chosen sometime soon.

Here are a couple of news stories that came out of the conference in Perth:

• "AEGIC continue push to commercialise novel oat foods"
• "Morning Foods and Aberystwyth University team up to promote UK Oats on the world stage"

The last scientific talk at the conference was the one by Susanne Vogelgsang concerning the CROPDIVA project, which was also featured at the November "Speaking of Oats..." ("SOO...") webinar. The video of that webinar, which also discussed a project on Fusarium Head Blight called “FUGE”, is now available on YouTube. You can also find the video here on the newsletter site. If you would like to keep up with what’s happening with CROPDIVA, subscribe to the CROPDIVA newsletter!

Our next "SOO..." webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 17th at 10:30 am EST (UTC -5). Sarah Clarke, from ADAS, UK, will talk to us about "Understanding UK Oats: Physiology and Nutrition". Registration is now open!

Earlier this year, Cark Maunsell and Emilie Gombert presented a "SOO..." webinar about the use of oats in cosmetics. Emilie presents more information on using oat beta-glucan for haircare in this article.

A new oat cultivar out of Sweden that has high beta-glucan is described in this research report by Olof Larsson. 'Armstrong' is the first registered variety coming from CropTailor’s mutant oat population and has ‘Sang’ in its pedigree. Sang, of course, is one of the lines that has now been fully sequenced.

Martin Mascher is one of the authors of the Sang paper and presented the work of the PanOat genome sequencing consortium in Perth. He and Nils Stein, also one of the authors of the Sang paper, recently received the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize. Congratulations, Nils and Martin!

In other people-related news, some of you will have heard that Dale Nellor has left his position with NAMA (the North American Millers' Association). He is now the Executive Vice President of the National Water Resources Association (NWRA). Best of luck in your new position, Dale!

Part one of the current missive will now end here. While you’re waiting for part two, please take a look at the latest 'Oat Scoop' newsletter from the Prairie Oat Growers Association (POGA)!