2009 Annual Report 1a.Objectives (from AD-416) 1. Association mapping of beta-glucan content and in elite oat germplasm and replicated comparison of phenotypic with marker-assisted selection. 2. Association mapping of beta-glucan content from the National Plant Germplasm System: complementation of elite oat. 3. Educational initiatives to pipeline students into plant breeding and to educate professionals. 1b.Approach (from AD-416) Apply association analysis to a population of elite oat lines tested. 200 lines from each tail of the distribution to genotypewith the marker system will be picked. Data for association alaysis of barley beta-glucan content will be obtained from the barley CAP and analyzed, providing a first source of candidate sequences. An Interactive distance short course will be developed. 3.Progress Report Beta-glucan QTL detection and genomic selection for beta-glucan content in elite oat germplasm: DNA marker data from lines from the last decade of oat breeding in North America have been analyzed to identify loci associated with beta-glucan content. Breeding programs for high beta-glucan content have been initiated using phenotypic, marker-assisted, and genomic selection. Crosses for these three programs have been performed. The initial population has also been grown out in the field and harvested. It is being processed for beta-glucan content evaluation. Beta-glucan QTL detection in diverse germplasm from the National Plant Germplasm System: DNA from the oat collection of the National Plant Germplasm System has been obtained for accessions divergent in beta-glucan content. This DNA has also been scored for about 1000 markers. Further analysis of this data has been initiated to estimate the extent of linkage disequilibrium in a broad oat population. This population was also grown in the field in 2009, has been harvested and is currently being processed. Education efforts in modern molecular breeding: Activities to develop a distance education short course on modern molecular breeding are taking place in conjunction with the Iowa State University Department of Agronomy Distance Education Program.