Oats Case Study

2.2.2 Oat
Oats are important annual cereal crop in the developing world and the most widely cultivated species is Avena sativa L. (Butt et al., 2013). Oats are grown well in the temperate zone, sub-tropics and high altitude tropics regions, predominantly American and European countries (Rasane et al., 2013). They are adapted well in cool and moist climate and more tolerated to rain than wheat, rye and barley. They also grew well in a wide range of soil type particularly medium textured, well-drained soils (Lim, 2012a).
Oats are famous with their well-balanced nutritional composition. They have good sources of carbohydrates, dietary fibers, functional protein, lipid, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals. Numerous scientific studies had reported the health benefits of oats associated with their nutritional benefits (Head et al. 2010; Lim,

Wheat, corn, barley, and rice are all categories as grain while they can be in whole and refined form. Whole wheat flour is produced from wheat that other than durum and undergoes minimal processing process (Delcour and Hoseney, 2010).
The endosperm of wheat grain composed predominantly starch and proteins, the germ contain mainly of lipids and proteins while the bran contain mostly dietary fiber (Marquart, 2008). In addition, the growing researches also showed that whole grain foods contain plentiful of phytochemicals that promote many health benefits (Okarter and Liu, 2010). During the refining process of white wheat flour, the germ and bran parts of oats will be discarded. Different with white wheat flour, whole wheat flour do not undergo refining process (De Moura et al., 2009). Therefore, whole wheat flour contains more naturally occurring nutrients than wheat flour (Doblado-Maldonado et al.,