The Aarre oat cultivar was introduced into the National List of Finnish Cultivars in 1995. Aarre originates from the 1980 cross Puhti / Veli carried out at the former Institute of Plant Breeding of the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland in Jokioinen. After an institutional reorganization ownership of the cultivar was transferred to the state-owned Boreal Plant Breeding. The Aarre cultivar is UPOV-registered in Finland. It was bred using a modified bulk method. Panicle selection was carried out in 1984 when the highest rain levels of the century thus far were recorded in Jokioinen. Replicated variety trials of 1988 were performed after the very cold and rainy year of 1987. Aarre was selected under the line number Jo 1293 in the 1988 trials. Aarre was further tested during the 1992-1994 Official Variety Trials and has been tested as a new cultivar in later trials. Aarre is an early, high-yield cultivar, producing a high quality yield (Table 1). Aarre is as early as Veli, the most cultivated oat cultivar in Finland. Aarre produces a 2 % higher yield than Veli and has good straw stiffness. The quality of Aarre surpasses that of any other Finish oat cultivar. Aarre has a high hectoliter weight, high protein content and slight hull content. Grain size is rather large with a white hull. Aarre is the only Finnish oat cultivar in which earliness and scanty hull contents have been combined into the same genotype.
 
 

Table 1. Performance of Aarre oat cultivar compared to other oat cultivars of the 1992-1997 Official Variety Trials in Finland as tested by paired t-statistics
 

Variety	Number  of trials	Grain  yield  kg/ha	Lodging  %	Growing  time d	Plant  length  cm	1000 g.w.  g	HI-weight  kg	Protein  %	Protein yield  kg/ha	Hull  %	Groat yield kg/ha
Aarre	70	5424	19	96	104	37.2	54.2	13.3	608	21.7	4297
values compared to Aarre
Sisko	31	-239**	0	0*	-6***	-5.7***	-1.4***	-0.4*	-47***	2.6***	-314***
Leila	60	-200***	5*	0	-16***	0.8**	1.0***	-0.0	-22	2.4***	-286***
Veli	70	-41	3*	0	-3***	-1.4***	0.5***	0.0	-5	1.6***	-127***
Kolbu	68	290***	-2*	1***	-11***	-1.8***	-1.5***	-1.2***	-22**	1.7***	145***
Yty	45	223**	3	4***	-1	0.2	-0.9***	-1.4***	-39*	1.4***	121*
Roope	48	569***	-1	4	-7	-1.4***	-1.5***	-1.0***	8	0.7***	403***
Virma	25	350***	-1	4***	-9***	-3.4***	-0.4	-1.1***	-10	0.5*	277***
Puhti	58	64	2	5***	2**	-0.8**	-1.2***	-0.9***	-35***	0.0	44
Katri	34	539***	-6**	6***	-7***	-1.8***	0.0	-1.2***	4	0.3	385***
Freja	42	533***	0	6***	-10***	1.1**	0.9**	-2.0***	-37**	1.0***	328***
Salo	60	32	-7**	7***	-21***	3.0***	-0.5*	-1.0***	-42***	0.4*	1