Much of our community's work begins with grant applications, and the Prairie Oat Growers Association (POGA) has just been awarded nearly two million dollars from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's CAP program "to develop new oat cultivars suited for production in western Canada".

As for gatherings, there are two milling-related conferences coming up. The German Oat Forum will be held in Berlin on September 24th, and you can still register to attend NAMA’s annual meeting in mid-October. Don’t forget, too, that the “Golden Spurtle” World Porridge Championships are coming up in Scotland on October 12th!

At the recent Plant Canada meeting in Guelph, Annis Fatmawati, a PhD student in Jaswinder Singh’s lab at McGill University, was awarded first prize for her poster presentation: “Genetic transformation of oat to elucidate a gene associated with beta-glucan”. Annis also took first place in the “Agronomy in Action” category of the CSA Photo Contest. Congratulations, Annis!

Annis seems well on the way to achieving her goals. As for other goals achieved, there are two new articles for you in the "Research reports" section. One describes the practical use of genomic selection in oat breeding and the other describes comparative linkage mapping of diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid oat genomes.

Finally, with the goal of overcoming rust fungi in mind, the last Cereal Rust Bulletin of the year has just been posted.

Good luck to everyone with their grants, gatherings, and goals!