The OATLink project focuses on integrating key traits for the sustainable development of oat crops. This is achieved by combining conventional phenotypic selection with advanced molecular marker technologies.
OATLink Project
Project Overview
KEY INFORMATION
- Key Benefit: Development of markers for beta-glucan, improving oats for the milling industry and leveraging the health benefits of oats.
- Environmental Impact: OatLINK promotes oats as a low-input cereal crop, beneficial for cereal rotations, with a smaller environmental footprint, as shown by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
- Future Research: The project highlights opportunities for further research to reduce the environmental impact of oat crops.
Key Findings
The primary goal of OATLink was to incorporate important traits underlying sustainable development of oats by combining ‘conventional’ phenotypic selection with molecular marker technologies.
While conventional farmers, organic farmers, millers, and poultry producers have different objectives, they share common ground in:
- Economic competitiveness
- Good agronomic and disease resistance characteristics
- Sharing of molecular markers
This project combined the development of marker-assisted selection (MAS) with the development and testing of oats for the milling and poultry industries.
Specific objectives included:
- Developing new molecular markers, UK mapping populations, and contrasting bulk segregants for MAS of important traits.
- Identifying, incorporating, selecting, and evaluating key traits for sustainable production and human consumption.
- Identifying, incorporating, selecting, and evaluating important traits for sustainable production and premium livestock feed.
- Identifying, incorporating, selecting, and evaluating important traits for organic production.
Significant progress has been made in:
- Developing and applying molecular markers
- Developing the first winter oat genetic linkage map.
- Phenotyping populations for specific traits (low lignin husk, beta-glucan).
- Identifying markers linked to the dwarfing gene (dw6), height and yield components, beta-glucan content, oil content, and naked character.
The project also confirmed that increasing oil content enhances the Metabolisable Energy (ME) value of naked oats, highlighting the potential of high-oil oats in poultry diets and demonstrating a lower environmental impact compared to other cereals. NIR calibrations for oil and Nitrogen content were developed, and the suitability of oats for organic production systems was confirmed, with yields exceeding 7t/ha. Several potential varieties (winter, spring, husked, and naked) were tested for end-user suitability with the milling and poultry industries.