Improving oats for growers and consumers

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Add as preferred source Heart-healthy oats are finding their way into a wider variety of products and recipes as consumer demand grows. Although oats are grown on far fewer acres than other U.S. crops, farmers are able to keep up with demand through genetic gains in yield and other important agronomic traits.

A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign says these gains are due to long-term investment in public breeding programs. Only five public breeding programs remain in the U.S. Midwest—including the University of Illinois Oat Breeding Program—but together, they are responsible for developing the majority of oat varieties grown in the region.

The findings are published in the journal Crop Science .

U. of I. small grains breeder Juan Arbelaez says it is important to assess the performance of public breeding programs to guide future strategies, optimize resource allocation, track progress and identify gaps.

"We funnel resources toward developing new varieties that we hope will meet the demand of small grains growers in the region," said Arbelaez, associate professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U. of I.

"Occasionally, we need to take stock to make sure our programs are serving growers with varieties that are high-yielding, have high test weight and are disease-resistant."

To determine the success of the public breeding program, Arbelaez and his team analyzed 18 years of field trials in three Illinois locations. They found that yield grew by 1.2% per year, for a total gain of 645 kilograms per hectare, or 18 bushels per acre, over that period.

Similarly, test weight, which determines whether the grain is food grade and can be sold at a higher price, gained about half a pound per bushel every year. Importantly, these gains occurred despite an overall warming trend.

"What this means is that the breeding program has been very effective in increasing yields and test weight despite some detrimental environmental conditions," Arbelaez said. "We are located at the farthest south of what we consider the oat region. Our region is prone to heat stress, but despite that, we've been able to achieve gains for the past nearly 20 years."

However, yield and test weight were affected by high temperatures during critical reproductive periods, suggesting room for additional breeding improvement in those traits.

"Heat stress can be a big problem because it decreases the test weight of oats, and that's what gives oats value as a food crop. So that's a big challenge, especially in our region where we're getting higher and higher temperatures," Arbelaez said. "By continuing this work, we want to guarantee that there will be oat varieties available to farmers that can meet those standards regardless of the climate."

The team also looked at disease resistance, finding that resistance to oats' nemesis, Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV), was unchanged over the last 18 years. The researchers do not see this as a problem, however.

"In the case of disease resistance, specifically BYDV, there is a constant evolutionary race between the virus and host, where infection mechanisms in the virus cause resistance mechanisms in the host, and vice versa," Arbelaez said.

In other words, the virus and host are constantly battling it out, but neither is winning. If resistance was waning, that would have been evident in the data.

The genetic gains made by the oat breeding program at U. of I. over 18 years demonstrate the importance of public breeding programs in sustaining crop improvements. But the researchers are not focused on the past alone; as they look to the future, they plan to incorporate new methods like genomic selection and high-throughput sequencing to further improve oat varieties.

Sheila Scheffel et al, An in‐depth historical phenotypic and genetic assessment of oat ( Avena sativa L.) breeding at the University of Illinois, Crop Science (2026). DOI: 10.1002/csc2.70312

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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