Nordic oats are a reality. Scientists and producers are working together to increase production in northern Europe. Oats have many uses: biscuits, cakes, muesli, porridge and many more.
Nordic oats are now a reality. The pan-European interregional project OatFrontiers is studying different oat varieties, some of which are indigenous. The challenge: find out which ones adapt best to extreme weather in the Far North’s changing climate.
But how did the idea of planting and harvesting oats in the Far North, near the Arctic Circle, come about? Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson, head of the OatFrontiers project in Iceland, says that in Iceland "they have been working with different types of grain for a while now and oats were an orphan crop here, they were totally forgotten about. Then I came up with the idea of setting up a network of scientists and producers in the Nordic countries and, well, in the end we all got together here in Iceland, sat down and spent three days talking about oats, and that's where the idea came from.
Genetic testing is key
The OatFrontiers project started in 2023 and will run until the end of 2026. Data and research results are shared among the five participating countries (Iceland, Ireland, Finland, Sweden and Norway). More than 400 different oat varieties have been genotyped at the Finnish Natural Resources Institute, known as Luke, which is leading the project.
"The first step is to identify the best species, so that we can immediately recommend them to farmers. The second is to recognise the best progenitors for cross breading in order to obtain even better seeds. And the third thing we can do is find genomic associations with those traits that show adaptation to an extreme environment. This opens the door to gene editing, further breeding, genomic selection, etc.," explains Hilmarsson.
According to project leaders, producers in the regions concerned have shown a growing interest in the project.
"What we do is present the product to the farmers and tell them, ’You can grow this’. Then they can predict how much they want to grow, how to process it, how to make products like biscuits, breakfast oatmeal and a whole range of products that are vitally important, especially for island communities like Iceland," he adds.