Timeline of plant evolution to the present. In Jericho (modern Israel), there is a settlement with about 19,000 people. At the same time, Sahara is green with rivers, lakes, cattle, crocodiles and monsoons. At 8 ka, Common (Bread) wheat ("Triticum aestivum") originates in southwest Asia due to hybridisation of emmer wheat with a goat-grass, "Aegilops tauschii". At 6.5 ka, two rice species are domesticated: Asian rice, "Oryza sativa", and African rice "Oryza glaberrima". Timeline of plant evolution This article attempts to place key plant innovations in a geological context. It concerns itself only with novel adaptations and events that had a major ecological significance,
Plant genome assembly products were used to clone remaining gaps, and YACs allowed the characterization of telomere sequences. The resulting sequenced regions were 115.4 Mb of the 125 Mb predicted size of the genome and a total of 25,498 of protein-coding genes. To sequence and assemble the genome of Oryza Sativa (japonica), the same strategy was used. For Oryza Sativa a total of 3,401 mapped clones in a minimum tiling path were selected from the physical map and assembled. One of the most important crops in the world, maize (Zea mays), is the last plant genome project primarily based on Sanger BAC-by-BAC strategy.