Harnessing new technologies for sustainable oat production and utilisation

燕麦在谷物轮作中是一种有价值的间作作物，是一种比小麦投入更少的作物，在边缘地区表现良好，是一种高价值饲料，在草地轮作中生长良好。尽管如此，仍有必要改善关键性状，以增加燕麦的产量和利用率，同时通过减少农业投入来缓解气候和环境变化。随着消费者转向更健康的饮食（燕麦是其中的关键成分），研究还需要预测市场的变化。与来自制粉和畜牧部门的最终用户群体以及加工商（该项目的所有主要合作伙伴）进行的讨论确定了遗传改良可以对燕麦作物进行量化改良的优先领域。已经测试了各种标记发现方法，并建立了高密度燕麦图谱，但是很明显，在栽培燕麦中存在相对较少的多态性，因此迫切需要最大限度地利用可用的多态性，并能够从非英国适应的种质中精确地选择新的多态性，如果它被植物育种者有效地利用。该项目将通过开发和应用最先进的基因组学和代谢组学工具来解决这些问题，以进行针对性的燕麦遗传改良。重点是对关键性状的理解和操作，这将提高燕麦在改善人类健康方面的价值，实现燕麦作为高价值动物饲料的潜力，并通过先进的分馏技术开发燕麦的新机会。这样做还将提高以谷物为基础的轮作的环境和经济可持续性，并充分利用燕麦作为低投入谷物的价值。识别特定基因和标记的强大技术将推动对育种者友好的工具的发展，加速将由工业合作伙伴销售的改良燕麦品种的生产。这是一个多学科项目，将现代表型方法与基因组学研究人员、燕麦育种者和最终用户的专业知识相结合，还将通过开发具有农学重要性状多态性的实验群体来解决长期育种目标，这些实验群体比传统农艺品系更适合于定位和向前遗传方法。燕麦的各种最终用户（食品、饲料和工业用途）参与评估新的燕麦品系，将有助于将这项研究转移到燕麦育种计划中，提供具有工业所需特性的燕麦品种，并为可持续生产系统带来环境效益。

Oats are a valuable break crop in cereal rotations, a lower input crop than wheat, perform well in marginal areas and are a high value feed that grows well in grassland based rotations. Nevertheless there is a need to improve key traits that will increase the production and utilisation of oats whilst also mitigating climate and environmental change via reduced agricultural inputs. Research also needs to anticipate changes in the market as consumers shift towards healthier diets of which oats are a key component. Discussions with end-user groups from the milling and livestock sectors, as well as processors, all key partners in this project, have identified the priority areas where genetic improvement can make quantifiable improvements to the oat crop. Various approaches to marker discovery have been tested and high density oat maps have been established however it has become clear that there is relatively little polymorphism in cultivated oats and therefore an urgent need to maximise the use of available polymorphism and be able to select precisely for novel polymorphisms from non-UK adapted germplasm if it is to be used effectively by plant breeders. This project will address these issues by developing and applying state-of-the-art genomic and metabolomic tools for targeted oat genetic improvement. The focus is on the understanding and manipulation of key traits that will enhance the value of oats in human health improvement, realise the potential of oats as a high value animal feed and develop new opportunities for using oats through advanced fractionation. In so doing it will also increase the environmental and economic sustainability of cereal based rotations and capitalise on the value of oats as a low input cereal. Powerful enabling technologies for the identification of specific genes and markers will drive the development of breeder -friendly tools accelerating the production of improved oat varieties that will be marketed by industrial partners. This is a multi-disciplinary project which combines modern phenotyping methodologies with the expertise of genomics researchers, oat breeders and end-users, which will also address long term breeding goals by developing experimental populations which are polymorphic for agronomically important traits but more amenable to mapping and forward genetic approaches than conventional agronomic lines. Involvement of the various end-users of oats (food, feed and industrial uses) in the evaluation of novel oat lines will facilitate the transfer of this research into oat breeding programmes and deliver oat varieties with the characteristics that industry requires and deliver environmental benefits to sustainable production systems.