First, I’d like to thank everybody who’s been attending the “Speaking of Oats…” (SOO) webinars, as well as all the speakers we've had so far. If you haven’t been able to join us live, recordings of the seminars are available on the SOO page or (in a tidier format) in the Research Report sections for 2020 and 2021. The recording of January’s T3/Oat webinar is now available, along with a transcript of the Q. and A. session. The recording of February’s GrainGenes webinar is also available, along with a link to the comparative mapping tutorial mentioned during the talk.

Several items came up for discussion during the GrainGenes talk, including my request for help with finding more genetic maps to add to the database. At the end of the session, the topic shifted, and Carlos Riede mentioned that help is needed in studying a new race of crown rust attacking oats in Brazil. The details of both these requests are in the “Community News” section. Please help if you can!

Speaking of rust, people in the southern United States are starting to see crown rust in their fields. This is a reminder to send any observations and/or samples of rust to Oluseyi Fajolu at the Cereal Rust Lab in St. Paul, MN. The instructions for submitting observations and samples can be found in the April 9th, 2020 issue of the Cereal Rust Bulletin.

There is also a new job opportunity at the Cereal Disease Lab. It is for a Research Plant Pathologist/Plant Molecular Geneticist (GS12/13 level), and applicants must be US citizens.

If you're in Australia, there's a job opening there for Manager of the National Variety Trials in Adelaide. For Australian growers, a new app is available - 'FlowerPower' is a tool for predicting flowering dates for different varieties of cereals sown at different times.

Now it's time to grab your popcorn and watch some more webinars!

• SDSU Extension Crop Hour: Crown Rust Management in Oats & What to Consider When Choosing an Oat variety, with Emmanuel Byamukama, Connie Strunk, and Jonathan Kleinjan
• SDSU Extension Crop Hour: How is Weed Control Different in Oats than Other Small Grains & Are there insect pests in oats? with Paul Johnson and Adam Varenhorst
• SDSU Extension Crop Hour: Nutrient Management and General Agronomy, with David Karki and Anthony Bly
• Growing of Modern Spring Oat Varieties, with Steffen Beuch from NORDSAAT
• Recordings from the 2021 National Tillage Conference, hosted by TEAGASC
• National Association of Plant Breeders Professional Development Workshop, given by Rex Bernardo, UMN
• Overcoming Barriers to the Registration of New Varieties, with Ian Mackey from SRUC
• Three webinars from CBD discussing DSI (Digital Sequencing Information).

In terms of other meetings, PAGXXIX (Plant and Animal Genome conference) will not take place this year after all. The next meeting will be in January, 2022.

More information about what happened during the first meeting of the Oats Ireland Forum should be available soon. In related news, oat researchers in Ireland and Wales have recently received EUR 2.7 million in funding!

Finally, please join us for the next SOO webinar on Thursday, March 18th, at 11 am EDT (Can/USA). José Costa, et al., will bring us up-to-date with what is happening in oat research at the USDA-ARS. Registration is now open, and you can check the time offset here (N.B.: most of North America switches to Daylight Savings Time on March 14th). Hope to see you then!