"...is some black oat groats", or so the song goes (not really). Alexander Rybalka, from Ukraine, is seeking oats with back caryopses. Not black hulls; black caryopses (groats). If you know of any, please get in touch with him. Details are in this article.

If you will be sending some oats to Alexander (or anyone else), please make sure you follow the rules regarding import/export requirements and Material Transfer Agreements! Note that changes coming to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the Plant Treaty) will have implications for the transfer of material and the future of oat breeding. More information ca be found in a new article from Axel Diederichsen that has been added to the "Research Reports" section and also to the "Germplasm" page. For more information about some of the issues being discussed by parties to the Plant Treaty and also the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), take a look at this video on DSI (digital sequence information) from Kew Gardens, watch this webinar on Farmers' Rights from the FAO, and learn about discussions being held concerning AI and synthetic biology.

Besides Axel's, two more articles have been added to the "Research Reports" section. One is a summary of project updates presented by Elena Prats' group at a meeting in Spain, and the other is an article about this year's Finnish Oat Yield Contest, written and then translated by Annaleena Ylhainen.

For more information about the oat growers' community in western Canada, take a look at the November issue of the Prairie Oat Growers Association's "Oat Scoop" newsletter. More news stories from POGA can also be found here.

POGA supports a lot of research programs, and one of the beneficiaries has been Jaswinder Singh's lab at McGill University. His student Zhou Zhou has been in the news recently, talking about his research into boosting heart-healthy oils in oat. News about work on oat proteins by Sijo Joseph at AAFC in Manitoba is also mentioned in the article.

Most producers will tell you, though, that "yield is king", and this article discusses DPIRD and InterGrain's "Yield per se" project, which is focussed on improving oat yields in Western Australia.

Also in Australia, there is news about changes in the leadership of the GIWA Oat Council. There have also been changes at Grain Millers in the USA.

In Minnesota, USA, it appears that oats are making a comeback. The team at the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Lab at the University of Minnesota is helping make that happen by releasing new rust-resistant varieties. They take their work more seriously in Australia, though - just look at this birthday cake made by the wife of University of Sydney PhD candidate James King!

While the genetics of any new oat cultivar is very important, so, of course, is how it is grown, and several groups in the EU are studying practices such as intercropping. Here are practice abstracts from the IntercropVALUES and CROPDIVA projects. The latter also discusses intercropping in the context of food safety.

CROPDIVA also released a practice abstract on "Spring oats for autumn seeding". You can find out more about this project and biodiversity in agriculture generally by attending the 2nd International Symposium on "Agrobiodiversity Along the Value Chain" in Lleida, Spain, from 20-22 May, 2025. This second edition is jointly organized by the CROPDIVA and LEGENDARY projects.

One of the oat researchers participating in the CROPDIVA project is Catherine Howarth from IBERS in Wales, and she was recently featured in a short video addressing the question of whether or not dwarf oat lines have short roots as well as stems. She is also a part of the Oat Frontiers project. This group recently held a meeting in Iceland (article text in Icelandic), which is, indeed, on the frontier when it comes to growing oats.

Another of the participants in the Oat Frontiers project is Atik Rahman from Teagasc in Ireland. Along with Nefeli Lampoglou, Daniela Freitas, and Andre Brodkorb, he was a winner in the Teagasc Research and Innovation Photo Competition, with a photo of the β-glucan rich cell walls of an oat kernel. Congratulations to the whole team!

If you're interested in more photos, the ones taken at the AOWC conference in Saskatoon this past summer are now available for viewing! There's also a video from the field.

The year is coming to a close, and the Christmas season is well underway for many of us. I've been featuring a lot of oaty holiday recipes in the "Weekly Web Harvest" posts. The Royal Highland Education Trust website has a page featuring facts about reindeer and a recipe for "Reindeer dust", and it can also be accessed via a link in the "For Kids" section of the newsletter.

So - what would I like for Christmas? More submissions for the newsletter, of course! Please send them along to oatnewsletter@gmail.com. (And if anyone has more information about the eating habits of "Julenisse", perhaps you could let me know!)

Thank you, as always, for your support. Happy *HULL*idays!

(Door decorated by the members of Mehri Hadinezhad's cereal chemistry lab at Ottawa RDC, AAFC: Jeremy Ballentine, Makayla Giles, Jennifer Saunders, Keeley MacDonell, Oliver Reeves, and Mehri, too)