Oat Research
Oats are an essential grain, both for human consumption and animal feed. Oat products are whole grain and heart-healthy. Oats are also valuable in environmentally sustainable crop rotation systems, helping to ensure sound cropping and soil conservation practices. Nutrition experts and many consumers in North America have long recognized the value of oat nutrition to consumer’s diet. Solid nutrition science has repeatedly proven that oats, particularly oat soluble fiber, has many health benefits. In 1997 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that consumption of oats and oat-based products significantly reduces total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. Since that time oat consumption has been increasing at about 5% per year. More recent research data indicate that including oats and oat-based products as part of a lifestyle management program may confer health benefits that include reducing artery plaque, and are consistent with dietary patterns that may favorably alter the risk for elevated blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, and obesity.
Emerging technologies in the plant sciences allow breeders to efficiently select for improved nutritional quality, disease and pest resistance, and drought and heat tolerances. Until now, oats were seriously lagging in the utilization of such technologies. NAMA oat millers have pledged $510,000 to the “North American Collaborative Oat Research Enterprise” (North American CORE) a global oat research project that will substantially improve the genetic map of oat and could, for the first time, produce a complete map. This effort will lay the groundwork for utilization of molecular technologies for oat improvement. Investment in genetic information and marker technology is critical if we are to develop new oat varieties with better nutritional characteristics and production stability in the face of disease and insect attack.
No private commercial oat breeding programs exist in the U.S. Oat research is conducted only by state land-grant universities and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. Current federal investment in oat research is only about $5.1 million per year, yet the return from this modest investment exceeds that figure many times over. To remain a viable crop and provide much needed diversity in field crops, progress in oat improvement must be sustained. Federal support for oat research is essential to this progress.
Last update January 5, 2011
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