New Research Into Forgotten Alpine Oat Variety

Oats are currently undergoing a renaissance and are becoming an increasingly important item on our plates (or in our cereal bowls). This is hardly surprising - after all, oats are an excellent source of plant-based protein. They also contain lots of roughage, which stabilises blood sugar and reduces cholesterol, as well as vital nutrients including a range of B vitamins. Oat milk is an increasingly popular substitute for cow's milk - it is even available in a "barista" version that can be whipped up into a foam.

Now, with a view to better evaluating - and taking advantage of - the many merits of oats, an international team of researchers has compiled the genetic information and all the genes of 30 different oat varieties into a single database. The corresponding study has just been published in the journal Nature.

Researchers refer to a gene atlas of this kind as a pangenome. The project to create the gene atlas for oats was managed by the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben, Germany, which has already built up a pangenome for barley.

Other contributors to the oat pangenome include Bruno Studer, Professor of Molecular Plant Breeding at ETH Zurich, and his group. Together, they analysed the genome of the 'Hative des Alpes' variety piece by piece and fed it into the atlas.

'Hative des Alpes' is a long-forgotten variety from the Swiss Alps that saw widespread cultivation in Switzerland between 1910 and 1930. In 1925, seeds were delivered to the Vavilov Institute in Saint Petersburg for storage. Although Swiss farmers continued to grow these oats in the foothills of the Alps until the start of World War II, the variety then disappeared from the fields without a trace.

Until 2012, that is, when Agroscope, the Swiss centre of excellence for agricultural research, received seeds back from the Vavilov Institute. After checking the viability of the seeds, Agroscope began propagating 'Hative des Alpes'. It was from this "recultivation" that Studer obtained seeds for further investigation.

The researchers grew the plants under standardised conditions and isolated the DNA and RNA molecules from them. Ultimately, they deciphered all of the genes and analysed which of them were active in which parts of the plant - roots, leaves or flowers.

Comparing and selecting

On the one hand, the pangenome includes the core genes of an organism - that is, the genes that are present in all of the analysed plants regardless of the variety or origin. On the other hand, these gene atlases also contain a set of genes that are specific to only one or a few varieties.

"These specific genes may be of interest for cultivation," explains Studer. For example, the 'Hative des Alpes' variety has genes that give the plants a resistance to certain diseases or make them particularly well suited to cultivation in the Alpine region. "If we know which genes these are and what they do, we can use crossbreeding to introduce them into another variety in a targeted manner," explains the ETH professor. "Pangenomes are therefore useful not only for basic research but also for breeding new varieties."

Studer actually specialises in fodder grasses - in other words, in cattle feed. Why, then, is he suddenly working with oats? "Oats also belong to the grass family, albeit one that's of interest for human nutrition. That, combined with the allure of an old, forgotten variety, drove me to participate in the project. You could say I've joined the oat revolution in my way," he says with a grin.

Oats diversify agriculture

Although oats are becoming an increasingly important foodstuff, they still play a minor role in today's agriculture because they are less productive than wheat. Accordingly, it is not really an option to switch to oats in key wheat-growing areas. "However, oats could once again play a greater role in the diversification of farms in the cool and rather rainy conditions of the Alpine foothills," says Studer. Unlike wheat, oats thrive in that environment. Today, these areas are home to typical grassland that is predominantly used for milk and meat production. Oats are also resistant to certain fungi that can damage wheat.

Studer believes there is considerable potential to apply the pangenome concept to other less-cultivated plant species. "Particularly in orphan crops, modern plant breeding methods of this kind can be used to achieve huge genetic gain within a short time and to implement such crops into commercial farming in Switzerland. This boosts not only agricultural biodiversity but also the variety of food on our plates."