Welcome to the new and improved version of the Oat Newsletter!  Many thanks to Gerard Lazo, the site administrator, for putting all of this together.

Please take some time to explore the new site and give us your feedback.  You can start by reading three new articles.  The first article is in the “Other Meetings” section and concerns the presentation made by Gabe Gusmini at the 35th Brazilian Oat Conference.  The other two articles are in the “Community News” section.  One brings us news of the decision by Grain Millers to refuse oat shipments that have been treated with glyphosate (but not for the reason you might think).  The other describes an award won recently by Oat Cosmetics for their Oat Lipid e product – congratulations, Cark Maunsell, et al.!

One of the new features of the website is the way that upcoming events are listed.  These now appear on a calendar and as part of the “Upcoming Events” section at the bottom of most pages.  Click on each event listing for further information.  OATS2020 will be held in Birmingham this November, there will be an oat meeting at the International Plant and Animal Genome conference in San Diego in January, and the 10th International Oat Conference will be held in St. Petersburg in July, 2016.  Don’t forget that registration for OATS2020 is now open! 

Finally, I would like to thank Jack Dawes for including an article about the Oat Newsletter in his own newsletter, “Oat Scoop”.  This is the official newsletter of POGA, the Prairie Oat Growers Association, and reaches 14,000 people, most of whom are producers from western Canada (http://www.poga.ca/).

Enjoy touring the site!