... your place for oat information.

Thank you so much to Igor Loskutov and the rest of the organizers of the 10th International Oat Conference for hosting such a great meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, last month! Over time, more information concerning what took place will be added to the newsletter. In the meantime, if you have photos or other information to add, please get in touch with me.

…but the deadline for registering for the 10th International Oat Conference is Wednesday, June 1st! Please take a look at the latest circular from the Local Organizing Committee for more information and more deadlines.

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.

Seems my timing was a little off this month.... There have been further changes to the 10th International Oat Conference deadlines: the early bird registration deadline is now April 15th, and you have until May 1st to get in those abstracts! Other deadlines may also be changing, so keep an eye on the website.

I also have an important request from Nezha Saidi, who is the Curator of Forage and Pasture Legumes Genetic Resources at INRA in Morocco:

(or try not to Fall too hard!)

Happy Easter to those of you celebrating! If you’re looking to bake any treats for the holiday, why not try Chocolate Peanut Butter Oat Cookie nests? The recipe has been added to the "Recipes" section.

The tenth International Oat Conference, Oats 2016, will be held from July 11th-15th, 2016, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Registration is open, and further details concerning presentation abstracts (due April 1st), accommodation, etc., can be found on the website.

Plant and Animal Genome (PAG) XXIV was held in January, and included a workshop dedicated to oats. Links to the presentations given at the workshop can now be found in the "Other Meetings" section. Oat-related poster abstracts are also listed.

We have lots for you to digest in this update. First, in the "Research Reports" section, we have a copy of the latest SARDI oat breeding newsletter. Also, the November issue of the Prairie Oat Growers Association newsletter is now on the POGA website.

“…raise the song of harvest home.”(1) All is, one hopes, “safely gathered in”, at least in the Northern hemisphere! In this season of Thanksgiving, let us take some time to reflect upon the things for which we are thankful, including this wonderful community.

Happy Equinox, everyone!

This past summer, a number of oat researchers and their work appeared in the news. First, the final report from the QUOATS project, which involved a number of UK research institutions, government organizations, and industry partners, was released. It can be found on-line here, as well as in the Research Reports section.

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy, crews are jumpin’, and the oats are ripe….”  Or something to that effect (1).  For those of you for whom it is summer, I hope that you are enjoying some time off as well as having a great field season!

It would be wonderful to hear how everyone has been doing in the field.  What have conditions been like for you?  How are your lines performing?  Did you host a field tour?  Many of the research reports in the Oat Newsletter archives are summaries of what happened in the field.