Oat Global: Uniting the Oat World at OatGlobal.org

In the last decade the size of the oat R&D community has decreased significantly. Our competitiveness in the research community and in the agricultural value chain that we support depends on thinking and acting both cooperatively and globally. Many challenges in oat production and processing are also of global nature, and transfer of knowledge across geographies is key to success.  Recent advances in genomic technologies have delivered many new tools that the oat community could use effectively, but this requires that scientific expertise in the oat community be continually invigorated. This is best done through informed community-wide consultation and coordinated funding.  In 2014, Oat Global (www.oatglobal.org) was created as a strategy forum driven by the leaders of the public and private oat community at large.  Oat Global proposes to operate across agencies, institutions, corporations, and national boundaries, in support of all pre-competitive R&D in any research field related to oats.   Oat Global shall provide a unifying platform for open knowledge, open data, strategy, and resource sharing.  Oat Global is governed by a Strategy Committee representing an open global membership.  As needs are identified, Oat Global will engage with potential funding groups, and co-ordinate or motivate project teams to execute sponsored initiatives.  The founding Oat Global group believes strongly that this lofty ambition will be realized, as the value of the outcomes is so high.  The first Oat Global sponsored initiative is the expansion of the T3 relational database for oat genotype and phenotype data, as described in the next presentation.