It's back! We're resurrecting the “Speaking of Oats...” (“SOO...”) webinar series this month. Duong Nguyen, from CSIRO, will speak to us about “Leveraging molecular tools and data integration to solve the oat crown rust puzzle” on May 15th at 4:30 pm (16:30) EDT (UTC-4). The time is unusual because Duong is in Adelaide, Australia. Registration is now open! Check the time offset for your location here.

We are a little bit rusty when it comes to hosting these webinars, so it seems fitting that crown rust will be the topic of this one.

In other rust news, Cereal Rust Bulletin #1 for 2024 has been posted on the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Lab website. Two new articles from this group also discuss crown rust – Moreau, et al. and Nazareno, et al..

A nice article about resistance to crown rust in Canadian oats features an interview with Jim Menzies.

A new report states that oat crown rust has been found in South Korea for the first time. Shawna Mathieson, from the Prairie Oat Growers Association, took part in a recent trade mission there to promote Canadian oats.

A new oat research consortium has been launched in Australia. This consortium will focus on oat quality and market positioning.

A series of webinars discussing the potential for Australian oats in Asia is being held this month. These are listed under “Events” in the last several "Weekly Web Harvest" posts. As information concerning events is often received rather close to the dates they are held, and as many of the events are not specific to the oat community, the effort is not always made to post them in the main calendar. If you wish to discuss how event postings are handled, please drop me a line at oatnewsletter@gmail.com, or post a message to the OatMail group.

Three events that are listed in the calendar are field days for the University of Illinois, Ottawa RDC (AAFC), and Brandon RDC (AAFC). The American Oat Workers' Conference (AOWC) in Saskatoon is also listed. Regarding AOWC, please remember that abstracts are due June 7th! Registration is open until June 24th.

If you missed the Celiac Disease Foundation webinar on April 24th, you can watch the recording here. The “SOO...” webinar on May 15th will be recorded and made available on YouTube and in the newsletter.

Hope to see you “SOO...”n!