Postharvest of oats grain

After harvest, oats are generally marketed through local and /or terminal elevators except that which is used on farm.

A large portion of the oat crop is used in livestock feed. This grain may be pulled out of the marketing channel at any point. A high-yielding, quality oat crops needs careful postharvest handling and storage to ensure or improve its milling and nutritional quality.

Humidity and temperature are the main factors influencing the biological activity of the grain nd the interaction of microorganism and animal organisms with the stored grain.

Seed of oats is usually dry (10-12% moisture content) at harvest time of the grain moisture content is high at harvest, the seeds must be dried to a safe moisture level (below 13.5 %( to avoid biodeterioration).

In the tropical countries, sun drying is a common practice for small quantities of produce. Mechanical drying is essential in large-scale production to avoid seed losses due to birds, rodents and unexpected rains and to ensure uniform drying of seeds.

The seed of oats must be cleaned, treated and bagged immediately after threshing and drying to maintain their high quality. The cleaning of oats begins with a weighing scale, followed by magnet for removal of any ferrous metal or its alloy from the oat stream.

A grain separator or classifier is used next, with an air-recycling aspiration system attached. This would help remove larger, finer and lighter foreign material form oats.

Grading function can be accomplished using drum graders which make separations on the basis of width. In the older oat processing plants grading is also carried out using a grading sifter with a various screen sizes to sort small, medium and large oats.
Postharvest of oats grain