Oat is among the top ten cereal crop species in terms of global production. It can adapt to different climates, and farmers can grow it successfully even in harsh environments where other crops such as rice and corn fail. However, not all oat plants are the same. Based on their grains, two major oak varieties can easily be distinguished: hulled, grains that are covered in a non-edible husk, and naked, grains that have a soft outer casing that easily separates from the edible grain during threshing. To gain information on the origins of these different varieties, researchers in China have sequenced the genomes of over 100 oat plants from around the world. Their analyses indicate that, unlike what is the current belief — that the two varieties came from one domestication event, the hulled and naked oat were domesticated independently. The work is published in the Open Science journal GigaScience.