This article is about the common cereal. For other cultivated and wild species of the genus, see Avena. The wild ancestor of Avena sativa and the closely what is whole wheat flour called in australia minor crop, A.
Genetic evidence shows the ancestral forms of A. Oats are best grown in temperate regions. They have a lower summer heat requirement and greater tolerance of rain than other cereals, such as wheat, rye, or barley, so they are particularly important in areas with cool, wet summers, such as Northwest Europe and even Iceland. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. In Scotland, a dish was made by soaking the husks from oats for a week, so the fine, floury part of the meal remained as sediment to be strained off, boiled, and eaten. Oats are also widely used there as a thickener in soups, as barley or rice might be used in other countries.
Oats are also commonly used as feed for horses when extra carbohydrates and the subsequent boost in energy are required. They may be given alone or as part of a blended food pellet. Winter oats may be grown as an off-season groundcover and ploughed under in the spring as a green fertilizer, or harvested in early summer. Oat straw is prized by cattle and horse producers as bedding, due to its soft, relatively dust-free, and absorbent nature. The straw can also be used for making corn dollies.
Tied in a muslin bag, oat straw was used to soften bath water. Oats are also occasionally used in several different drinks. In Britain, they are sometimes used for brewing beer. Oatmeal stout is one variety brewed using a percentage of oats for the wort. Oat extracts can also be used to soothe skin conditions, and are popular for their emollient properties in cosmetics.
Oat grass has been used traditionally for medicinal purposes, including to help balance the menstrual cycle, treat dysmenorrhoea, and for osteoporosis and urinary tract infections. Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults. The established property of their cholesterol-lowering effects has led to acceptance of oats as a health food. Oat bran is the outer casing of the oat. Its daily consumption over weeks lowers low-density lipoprotein and total cholesterol, possibly reducing the risk of heart disease. Beta-D-glucans, usually referred to as beta-glucans, comprise a class of indigestible polysaccharides widely found in nature in sources such as grains, yeast, bacteria, algae, and mushrooms. Oat beta-glucan is a viscous polysaccharide made up of units of the monosaccharide D-glucose, and is composed of mixed-linkage polysaccharides.
This means the bonds between the D-glucose or D-glucopyranosyl units are either beta-1, 3 linkages or beta-1, 4 linkages. Oat prolamins, named avenins, are similar to gliadins found in wheat, hordeins in barley, and secalins in rye, which are collectively named gluten. Use of pure oat products is an option, with the assessment of a health professional, when the celiac person has been on a gluten-free diet for at least 6 months and all celiac symptoms have disappeared clinically. Noire d’Epinal, an ancient oat variety. Oats are sown in the spring or early summer in colder areas, as soon as the soil can be worked. An early start is crucial to good yields, as oats go dormant in summer heat.
In warmer areas, oats are sown in late summer or early fall. Oats are cold-tolerant and are unaffected by late frosts or snow. Oats grow well on sandy loam to heavy clay soils with good drainage. On acid soils, oats perform better than other small-grain cereals. Lower rates are used when interseeding with a legume. Oats remove substantial amounts of nitrogen from the soil. They also remove phosphorus in the form of P2O5 at the rate of 0.
Harvest techniques are a matter of available equipment, local tradition, and priorities. Oats can also be left standing until completely ripe and then combined with a grain head. This causes greater field losses as the grain falls from the heads, and harvesting losses, as the grain is threshed out by the reel. Historical harvest methods involved cutting with a scythe or sickle, and threshing under the feet of cattle. Late 19th- and early 20th-century harvesting was performed using a binder.
Oats were gathered into shocks, and then collected and run through a stationary threshing machine. After combining, the oats are transported to the farmyard using a grain truck, tractor-trailer, or road train, where they are augered or conveyed into a bin for storage. 3 oats must weigh at least 38. 4 oats and have no grade. The average production is 100 bushels per acre, or 3. It is also possible to do introgression of traits in oats from very wide intergeneric hybridization. In contrast to wheat, oats sometimes retain chromosomes from maize or pearl millet.