Australian plant breeders have played a key and outstanding role in the betterment of crop and pastoral industries throughout the nation. Our environment is so unique, and often harsh, that plants taken unaltered from other parts of the world have almost always been deficient in many attributes and have had to be modified by plant breeding to be of value to our nation and profitable to our farmers.

Patrick Guerin is typical of the Australian plant breeders that this nation has successfully employed. His era as a plant breeder was especially difficult with few resources and backup that today’s researchers take for granted.

While NSW DPI has been involved in oat breeding since 1921, it was not until the 1960s that major progress occurred. Dr Fred Mengerson, Patrick Guerin, and more recently Glen Roberts have collectively developed varieties that have provided an excellent range of dual-purpose oat varieties for the many variable environments across the state.

Oats has been and remains an important crop to NSW with area sown sometimes exceeding 1.0 million hectares. Most of this is sown to dual purpose varieties and is used for grazing as well as grain production. No varieties anywhere else in the world suit the NSW environment for dual purpose production. This has been an enormous responsibility of the NSW DPI oat plant breeders (other states have always left the role of breeding dual purpose oats to NSW).

Patrick Guerin developed the highly successful dual purpose variety Blackbutt that was released in 1975. It has proven to be highly successful on the tablelands, some coastal areas, irrigation districts, as well as parts of the slopes. Even today it is popular amongst many growers. That is an outstanding record for a single variety, as commonly a good crop variety is superseded at least within a decade.

Blackbutt’s popularity is based on its ability to tolerate extensive grazing, excellent recovery after grazing for grain, useful tolerance to a number of significant disease, and generally good straw strength.

Carbeen, released by Glen Roberts in 1981, was largely developed following on from Patrick Guerin’s breeding program. It too continues to be an extremely popular variety across the tablelands, slopes and some coastal areas. Again it has been particularly valuable as a versatile dual-purpose variety.

Patrick’s book is full of highly valuable historic data that needs to be preserved for “all time”. Not only is such data valuable reference information, but as nearly always such information, when revisited, is essential for the successful development of future breeding programs. A student of future oat breeding, as well as current programs needs to understand the history to avoid reinventing the wheel and to understand the steps required to achieve important variety attributes.

To the non plant breeder, such as farmers, agronomists, and almost everyone interested in the industry, a better understanding of historic developments and achievements is important for a sound understanding of our agricultural industry.

The many tables, photographs, and charts in the publication add greatly to its richness and usefulness. The amount of research required for this document has been enormous.

All of us owe a debt to Patrick Guerin for writing this book. I urge everyone involved in the development of new crops and pastures, or such like industries, to record their achievements and views. We will all be much the richer because of publications like this book, and I think for hundreds of years, if not longer, such documents will be held in high regard.

Congratulations Patrick.

Bob Freebairn OAM
Formally NSW DPI District Agronomist
Northwest NSW Regional Director &
Currently a Private Agricultural Consultant and Journalist