oat germplasm adaptation to Eastern Africa

Oat (Avena sativa L.) is a key cereal for human food and livestock feed, but productivity is limited by biotic and abiotic stresses, worsened by climate change. We evaluated a 169-member oat panel for vegetative, forage quality, and grain traits across three subtropical sites in Sub-Saharan Africa over two seasons and genotyped it using Genotyping-by-Sequencing (GBS). Genetic analysis revealed moderate diversity (He = 0.39, PIC = 0.3) and two subgroups with admixture. Genome-wide association studies identified 42 SNPs linked to 16 traits and 46 candidate genes. Key candidates included homologs of OsAK3 and GSA1 associated with grain size, and VPS25, implicated in seed development and quality. These findings provide genomic resources and molecular markers to support breeding of stress-resilient, high-yielding oats adapted to subtropical agroecologies.