Oat Production and Research

D.D. Stuthman¹, H.W. Rines^1,2, R. Dill-Macky³, M. Carson^2,3, K.J. Leonard^2,3, J. Miller-Garvin¹, R. Caspers¹, and R. Halstead^1,2

¹Dept. of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota

411 Borlaug Hall, 1991 Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108;

²U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agriculture Research Service;

³Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota

e-mail stuth001@umn.edu

Minnesota Acreage and Production in 2001

The oat acreage harvested for grain in Minnesota in 2001 was estimated to be 210,000 acres, down about 34% from 2000. The estimated yield of 60 bushels/acre was down 12 bushels/acre from 2000. The total production in 2001 was the least since 1870.

Planting was delayed by a cold, wet spring reducing actual planted acreage by almost 20% from the early prediction of 375,000. The weather turned hot and very dry after mid-June, causing the 16% decline in yield/acre.

New Variety

Leonard, a sister of the 2001 releases Wabasha and Sesqui, was distributed to seed growers early in 2002. It has excellent yield potential, especially in more northern locations with longer growing seasons. It has a good combination of host protection against crown rust, BYDV and smut, the three diseases of concern in Minnesota. It was included in both the USDA Midseason Oat Performance Nursery and the Quaker Uniform Oat Nursery in 2000 and 2001 with the test number of MN 97239. Test weight and groat percent are average or below.

Personnel

At the end of August 2001, Don McVey formally concluded a long, productive career with the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory. Don has been the key player in launching and continuing our recent search for slow rusting which we expect to be more durable than major gene resistance. He developed the protocol for field evaluation of this rate-reducing type of crown rust resistance, and during the last six years since our original selections, we have accumulated a large group of slow rusting genotypes. Fortunately, he remains active generously sharing his expertise.

Dr. K.J. Leonard is now a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Plant Pathology. He continues as a member of our crown rust partial resistance team.

r. Marty Carson arrived in February from North Carolina to become the new Director of the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory. Marty also is an adjunct faculty member in Plant Pathology. He joins our slow rusting team and is generally interested in more durable disease resistance.

Dr. Jill Miller-Garvin joined the Agronomy Department in September 2001 as a Research Associate on the breeding program. Her primary emphasis will be on slow crown rusting with some effort on smut resistance. She was working on disease resistance on the alfalfa breeding program at Cornell prior to coming to Minnesota.

Dr. Juan Diaz returned to Minnesota from Uruguay during April 2002 to complete his PhD requirements. He also received the H.K. Hayes Award given annually to the outstanding graduate student in Agronomy and Plant Genetics. His research dealt with using recurrent selection to improve slow crown rusting, and using Digital Image Analysis (DIA) to precisely measure components of slow rusting. A paper on the recurrent selection will appear soon in Crop Science and one on the DIA measurements has been submitted to Plant Disease.

Marcelo Pacheco, a PhD student from Porto Alegre continues on his PhD program. His research has two main emphases: 1) comparison of selection for slow rusting in Minnesota and parallel in Brazil, and 2) to identify molecular markers associated with slow rusting loci accumulated with recurrent selection.

Dr. Jose A. Martinelli from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (URGS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, returned home in March after a year-long sabbatical in the Cereal Disease Laboratory. He worked mainly on crown rust (partial) resistance while in Minnesota.

Dr. Vladimir Portyanko completed a two-year postdoctorate in August of 2001 in which he generated PCR-based markers for crown rust partial resistance QTLs identified in the cross MN 841801 x Noble and initiated testing them in other populations that have MN 841801 as a rust resistance donor parent. Vlad remains here at the University of Minnesota now working on a Medicago genomics project.

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