2010 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 Genomic selection for beta-glucan content in elite oat germplasm: We have performed experiments to determine the accuracy of genomic selection for beta-glucan and other traits in this oat population. It generally appears that we have sufficient marker density but that a larger training population size would be useful. Furthermore we found differences in accuracy on the basis of sub-populations used to form the training population. This information will be useful in the design of oat training populations in the future. Sub-population structure and linkage disequilibrium in a world-wide collection of oat: We obtained DNA marker data from three oat panels representing world-wide germplasm, though concentrated primarily in North America. The collection could be adequately described as originating from six sub-populations, though there was less differentiation between subpopulations in oat than in barley. Linkage disequilibrium decayed relatively rapidly in all sub-populations, suggesting that adequate genome-wide coverage of oat would require on the order of 10,000 markers. 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. Progress was monitored by monthly meetings in addition to phone calls, emails and/or conference calls as needed.