Editing Oat (section)

=== Domestication ===

Genomic study suggests that the hulled variety and the naked variety ''A. sativa var. nuda'' diverged around 51,200 years ago, long before [[domestication]]. This implies that the two varieties were domesticated independently.<ref name="Nan-2022">{{cite journal |last1=Nan |first1=Jinsheng |last2=Ling |first2=Yu |last3=An |first3=Jianghong |last4=Wang |first4=Ting |last5=Chai |first5=Mingna |last6=Fu |first6=Jun |last7=Wang |first7=Gaochao |last8=Yang |first8=Cai |last9=Yang |first9=Yan |last10=Han |first10=Bing |title=Genome resequencing reveals independent domestication and breeding improvement of naked oat |journal=GigaScience |volume=12 |date=28 December 2022 |pmid=37524540 |pmc=10390318 |doi=10.1093/gigascience/giad061 }}</ref> 

Oats are thought to have emerged as a [[secondary crop]]. This means that they are derived from what was considered a weed of the primary cereal domesticates such as wheat. They survived as a [[Vavilovian mimicry|Vavilovian mimic]] by having grains that [[Neolithic]] people found hard to distinguish from the primary crop.<ref name="Zhou-1999"/>

Oats were cultivated for some thousands of years before they were domesticated. A granary from the [[Pre-Pottery Neolithic]], about 11,400 to 11,200 years ago in the [[Jordan Valley]] in the Middle East contained a large number of wild oat grains (120,000 seeds of ''A. sterilis''). The find implies [[History of agriculture in Palestine|intentional cultivation]]. Domesticated oat grains first appear in the archaeological record in Europe around 3000 years ago.<ref name="Zhou-1999" /><ref name="Nan-2022" /><ref name="Weiss-2006">{{cite journal |last1=Weiss |first1=Ehud |last2=Kislev |first2=Mordechai E. |last3=Hartmann |first3=Anat |title=Autonomous Cultivation Before Domestication |journal=Science |volume=312 |issue=5780 |date=16 June 2006 |doi=10.1126/science.1127235 |pages=1608–1610 |pmid=16778044 }}</ref>