2nd Food Oats Conference, hosted by ScanOats, 19-21 June, Lund

Text: Lieselotte Cloetens, Photo: Andreas Modess

ScanOats hosted the 2nd Food Oats Conference which took place 19-21 of June in Lund, Sweden. The Food Oats Conference was initiated by VVT, Finland, in 2021 and was held remotely due to the restrictions during the pandemic. In total, 110 participants from academic and industry registered for the 2nd Food Oats conference. Most of the participants were based in the Nordic countries, but also people from Germany, UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Latvia, and US travelled to Lund to experience the event.

The conference started with a tour of the ScanOats´pilot plant, a workshop about public oat genetic resources and a presentation of the Northern Lights on Foods. These activities took place at the Chemical Centre (Lund University), the heart of ScanOats, where most of their research activities are carried out. After these introductory activities, there was a welcome reception at Medicon Village. Medicon Village is a cluster of life science research facilities and the perfect location for scientific conferences.

The next morning, the conference opened with a session where the ScanOats consortium was presented by prof. Leif Bülow. The industrial research partners Lantmännen, CropTailor and Oatly were also on stage to talk more about their current and future research. The following scientific sessions were based upon the six work packages within ScanOats. Each session was chaired by the respective work package leader. On the second day topics included oat genetic resources, oat breeding and crop management and oat processing. There was also a poster session where all oat topics of the entire value chain were presented. The poster session, breaks and lunches were a great opportunity to boost the participants´ networking skills.

The conference dinner was held at Grand Hotel. The combination of a delicious 3-course menu and Swedish entertainment resulted into smiling and shining oat people. Hopefully, all participants will remember that Swedes love to sing!

On the third day of the conference, inspiring talks about oat processing and oat health effects were given. The final part of the 2^nd Food Oats Conference was an industrial session with first a presentation given by Carbiotix followed by a panel discussion about “The future of plant-based drinks and products”. Companies involved in the panel were Lantmännen, Oaty, Danone, the Green Dairy and TetraPak.

After almost three full days of oat talks and discussions, it was time to close the conference. All participants went home with their backpack full of inspiration and motivation to further tackle oat research challenges!

The 3^rd Food Oats Conference is planned to take place in 2025 and several candidates are willing to host the conference. The location will be announced in the future. Looking forward to meeting you there!