Oats is a plant of the grass family, which is called sparrow wheat and wild wheat in the Compendium of Materia Medica. Oats are not easy to take off the skin, so it is called skin oats, is a low-sugar, high-nutrition, high-energy food. Oats are sweet and flat in nature. It can benefit the spleen, nourish the heart, astringent sweat. It has high nutritional value. It can be used for weak body sweating, night sweating or tuberculosis patients. It can be taken in soup, or "pounded and peeled to make noodles for steaming and cakes for eating." (Salvation Materia Medica). Oats are hardy, drought-resistant, highly adaptable to the soil, and can self-seed and reproduce. Oats are rich in dietary fiber, can promote gastrointestinal peristalsis, conducive to defecation, low calorie, low glycemic index, lipid and sugar, but also one of the high-grade tonic, in the poor areas is indispensable dry food.
Annual; roots developed, culms erect and smooth, leaf sheaths smooth or dorsiventrally hirsute, ligule large, without auricles, leaf blades flattened; panicle, rachis erect or pendulous, spreading in all directions, spikelet stalks curved and pendulous; glumes broadly herbaceous, lemmas hard and glabrous, awned or unawned; glumes with longitudinal grooves on ventral surface, sparsely velutinous; palea tightly packed with seed, not easily separated at maturity. This is different from Avena sativa (naked oat).
With terminal panicle. Spikelets 2- to several-flowered, mostly longer than 2 cm, stipe curved, disarticulating above the glumes and between the florets, but also uninterrupted, glumes 7-11-veined, longer than the lower florets, lemmas hard, 5-9-veined, awned or not, awns projecting from the middle of the lemma body, awn columns twisted and curved; stamens 3, ovary hairy.
This species resembles wild oat Avena fatua Linn. and its main characters are spikelets containing 1 or 2 florets; rachilla subglabrous or sparsely short hairy, not easily broken off; first lemma dorsally glabrous, basal disc with only a few short hairs or subglabrous, awnless, or only dorsally with a straighter awn, second lemma glabrous, usually awnless.
Oats is a long sunshine crop. It prefers cool and moist, avoiding high and dry temperatures, and requires low cumulative temperatures during reproduction, but is not suitable for cold climates. Seeds in 1 ~ 2 ℃ began to germinate, seedlings can tolerate a short period of low temperature, the absolute maximum temperature of 25 ℃ or more when photosynthesis is blocked.
Transpiration coefficient of 597, second only to rice in cereal crops, so drought and high temperature on oats is extremely significant, which is an important reason for limiting its geographic distribution. The soil requirements are not strict, can tolerate pH5.5 ~ 6.5 acidic soil. In the gray soil zinc content of less than 0.2ppm will seriously reduce yields, the lack of copper will reduce the starch content.
The sowing period varies from region to region. North, northwest and northeast China are spring sowing areas, with a fertility period of 80 to 115 days; southwest China is a winter sowing area, with a fertility period of 230 to 245 days. Oats need more water, and the main producing areas in China are dry farming areas, so it is extremely important to store water and conserve moisture through early fall plowing, harrowing, purging, and suppression.
It is advisable to choose alfalfa, grass rhinoceros, peas, broad beans and other leguminous crops as pre-crops. Soil thin plots, can continuously take the rotation of intermittent pressure green leisure crop rotation system. Irrigated land should be selected to resist collapse, water and fertilizer resistance, disease-resistant species.
Seed treatment and sowing: oats like moisture and fertilizer but barren, spring sowing and autumn harvest, long growing period, wide range of suitability. It is necessary to prepare the ground finely, and apply enough fertilizer to maintain moisture. To do a good job of seed mixing treatment. Before planting to choose high-quality varieties, with 800 times the new high fat film solution to soak the seeds, hitching and then pharmaceutical treatment can be fine sowing.
Spring sowing oats area in order to avoid the danger of dry and hot winds, soil temperature stabilized at 5 ℃ can be sown. Dryland oats should pay attention to regulating the sowing period, so that the water demand period coincides with the local rainy season. It is advisable to apply half-rotted organic fertilizer as base fertilizer before autumn turning, and seed fertilizer is available when sowing. Dryland sowing density per mu basic seedling 20 to 22 million, irrigated 25 to 35 million per mu.