Output details

Beacon (03-90ACn4) naked winter oat

The IBERS winter oat breeding programme includes both husked and naked oat varieties. In the latter the husk threshes free from the grain during harvest. The focus of the naked oat breeding programme has been the development of oat varieties that are appropriate for the animal feed sector but that combine good agronomic performance and with good disease resistance.

The naked oat variety Beacon (03-90ACn4) was derived from an original cross [96-41Cn3 (Tardis) x 95-207Cn4/1/2] that was made in 2003 and subsequently underwent accelerated pedigree selection. The objective was to provide a high yielding naked, conventional height winter oat variety using the variety Tardis as a source of mildew resistance, an important fungal disease for the oat crop. The benefits of improved disease resistance are both economic (reduced reliance on costly chemicals, higher yielding crops) and environmental.

Field trials at IBERS were used to compare the agronomic performance with other potential varieties and to provide grain for analysis of grain composition, specifically oil content. These confirmed the height to be comparable with the control variety Grafton, the variety to have a 1000 grain weight of 32.7g with 6.9% grain oil content. Disease resistance was also good and on this basis it was entered into official trials and added to the UK National List in 2011 and is currently awaiting the decision for inclusion to the UK Recommended List 2013.