Characterization of Nordic oats

In this unique collaborative project, hundreds of oat varieties in the Nordic seed collection are mapped to increase knowledge of the seed samples and their cultivation traits.

Roughly two-thirds of the Nordic seed collection consists of cereals. In this category there are about 1000 different accessions (seed samples) of oats that are conserved by NordGen. Interest in this crop has increased in recent years, not least due to the demand for plant-based foods. Therefore, 764 seed samples of oat were cultivated in field by NordGen during 2022. This cultivation included all cultivars and landraces in the oat collection. The aim was, among other things, to study the cultivation traits and to improve the knowledge of the Nordic oat collection.

During the year, a collaboration was developed to genotype all the accessions (i.e. genetic characteristics of the plant individual investigated through DNA analyses). NordGen, Oatly, Lantmännen and ScanOats share equally the costs of the DNA analyzes which are conducted by bioinformaticians at ScanOats. The new data will result in much more knowledge about the collection and provide information on the genetic relationship between all the samples. Because of this, it will be easier for researchers and plant breeders to be able to choose exactly the varieties they have a use for in the future. A better described genebank collection thus becomes more useful for those actors who are interested in developing new oat varieties that are more nutritious, more profitable or better adapted to a changing climate.

NordGen and Oatly have also carried out characterization based on phenotype (physical characteristics such as straw height, grain color, panicle shape and tendency for shattering). The effort required many hours of work in the field, a job that demonstrated the genetic diversity among the 764 oat varieties. For example, 36 accessions had unilateral panicles (in Swedish “plymhavre”). In that group, the panicle emergence ranged from 51 to 85 days after sowing and the height ranged from 85 to 160 centimeters.