New, heart healthy oat variety nearing release – Audio
John Mochon
Program Manager, Small Grains Breeding Program
Department of Agronomy
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
(608) 262-1650
mochon@wisc.edu
New, heart healthy oat variety nearing release
3:08 – Total Time
0:16 – What’s different about the new oat variety
0:50 – How much more betaglucan
1:09 – What new oat variety may mean
1:31 – Name and release potential
1:57 – Dim future for oats without progress
2:46 – Contribution to healthy food supply important
2:58 – Lead out
TRANSCRIPT
A new heart-healthy oat variety. We’re visiting today with John Mochon, Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, WI and I’m Sevie Kenyon.
Sevie Kenyon: John, welcome to our microphone. What’s different about this oat variety?
John Mochon: The biggest thing that stands out about this new variety beta gene is that it’s both high yielding variety, and it also at the same time is high in betaglucan. Betaglucan is a chemical in oats, that’s the heart-healthy chemical that you find in oats. It’s exclusive to oats, actually. And, if you were to look at a Quaker oats container you’ll see the big, yellow part of the label that says, “oatmeal helps remove cholesterol,” well that’s betaglucan action.
Sevie Kenyon: And John, can you give us an idea how much different this particular variety is in betaglucan?
John Mochon: It’s somewhere about 2 percent greater then an average oat would be in beta glucan, but if you look at that from the nutritional standpoint, that means that it has 20 percent greater betaglucan then the average oat variety, which is nutritionally very significant.
Sevie Kenyon: And John, what do you suppose this means to oat producers?
John Mochon: What we’re hoping that it means is that we have a variety that has an exclusive trait and that will cause the big oat consumers like the cereal companies, you know… it creates a demand, for that…in particular… type of oat.
Sevie Kenyon: Well, can you give us an idea what you call this variety and where it is in the process?
John Mochon: Its experimental name was X8787-1 and it takes about 13 years or so to get an F1 cross to become a variety. I have cleared the name BetaGene at the U.S. Patent Office. The “beta” is for betaglucan and the “gene” part is that it has those genes. I’m pretty sure this will be available to the general farmer in 2014.
Sevie Kenyon: What’s the future for oats?
John Mochon: The future for oats, I hate to be honest, is not that bright. We see declines across the whole country in the number of acres of oats that are being planted and so, I’m trying to add value to oats, it’s one of my goals, so that we can reverse that trend, hopefully. Things like betaglucan, developing forage lines, developing lines that are rust resistant, developing lines that have high groat percent. The groat is the part that you actually consume, the part of the oat that you actually eat.
Those are all projects that I’m trying to work on to add value to the oat itself. Oats are still grown on a large scale in about 15 states and Canada; Canada being the king of oat production.
Sevie Kenyon: John, what do you like about oats?
John Mochon: I’m from Wisconsin and I went to school here. I graduated from the UW and here I am working at the UW on something that I think is pretty significant, and that’s creating part of the food supply.
Sevie Kenyon: We’ve been visiting today with John Mochon, Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, WI and I’m Sevie Kenyon.