History of oats cultivation

Oats were one of the first cereals cultivated by man. They were to be found growing in ancient China as long ago as 7000 BC while the Greeks are believed to be the first to make porridge from oats.

The earliest mention of oats in China is in an historical work on the period 618 to 907 AD; it refers to the a variety known to botanists as Avena sativa nuda.

However, it was the Romans who not only introduced oats to other countries in Western Europe, but also gave them and other cultivated crops the name cereals, after the Roman goddess of agriculture: Ceres.

The ancient Greeks knew the genus well; they called it bromos, as the Latins called it Avena; but these names were commonly applied to species which are not cultivated and which are weeds mixed with cereals.

Pliny is speaking of the cultivated oat when he says that barley ‘degenerates into oats, in a such a way that the oat itself counts as a kind of corn, in as much as the races of Germany grow crops of it and live entirely on oatmeal porridge.He gives the planting time for oats, but Romans used oats only as cattle fodder.

Oats were first planted in the United States on Cuttyhunk, an island off the Massachusetts coasts, in 1602.

Today there are many varieties of oats which have evolved from the original Asian wild grass (Avena Fatua). The best quality oats grow where there is light fertile soil, where the climate is temperate and there is a rainfall of over 60cm (24") a year.
History of oats cultivation

History of Avena sativa

Oats are descended from A. Sterilis, a wild oat that spread as a weed of wheat and barley from the Fertile Crescent to Europe.

In the wetter, colder conditions of Europe, in which oats thrive, it was domesticated about 3000 years ago, and soon became an important cereal in its own right on the cooler fringes of Europe.

By the beginning of the seventh century oats were extensively established in Western Europe as a grain and forage crop and by 1024 oats had become an important crop in the British Isles.

Oats were brought to North America from two parts of Europe. They were introduced by the Spain into the southern part of North America, and into the northern part of the continent by the English and North European.

Oats were first planted in the United States on Cuttyhunk, an island of the Massachusetts coast, in 1602. 

Oats are chiefly a European and North American crop. These areas have the cool, moist climate to which oats are best adapted. Russia, Canada, the United States, Finland, and Poland are the leading oat producing countries.

In 1753 Carl Linnaeus described four oat species Avena sterilis, A. fatwa, A. sativa and A. nuda. He classified oats as wild or cultivated and among the cultivated oats he differentiated only the covered from the naked.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the five leading states in production usually were Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. By the 1960's, the main oat producing area began moving somewhat north and westward.
History of Avena sativa