The 10th International Oat Conference is coming up soon, and the local organizing committee has provided an update. For those of you planning to attend, abstracts for both oral presentations and posters are due this Sunday, May 1st! There are a number of other deadlines regarding visas and so on as well, so please check the website for details.

As for other meetings, the 2nd Oat Rust Forum was held at the University of Minnesota at the beginning of April. A summary of that meeting is in the "Other Meetings" section.

In the "Research Reports" section, we have another update from Clare Saied regarding the T3/Oat database. T3/Oat is also featured in the March issue of POGA’s “Oat Scoop” newsletter, where Nick Tinker describes this community effort, as well as other aspects of his research program. One of those aspects involves studying the genomes of various Avena species, and work by PhD student Honghai Yan was recently published in "Genome" and featured as Editor’s Choice!

Rather a lot of Canadian oat researchers have been in the popular press lately. There are stories in “Grainews” concerning "The story of oat breeding and research", "New oat varieties on the horizon", and "Five keys to successful oat production".

There is also an article on growing oats for the gluten-free market in the same publication. To add to that, the North American Society for the Study of Celiac Disease (NASSCD) has just released its position statement on the inclusion of oats in a gluten-free diet.

Speaking of the gluten-free market, new recipes have been added to the "Recipes" section, and one of them is for Gluten-free Matzoh. Happy Passover to those of you celebrating now, and Happy Orthodox Easter to those of you celebrating this weekend!