Oryza sativa Mountains of northern Luzon, Philippines. Glaszmann (1987) used isozymes to sort "O. sativa" into six groups: "japonica", "aromatic", "indica", "aus", "rayada", and "ashina". Garris "et al." (2004) used simple sequence repeats to sort "O. sativa" into five groups: "temperate japonica", "tropical japonica" and "aromatic" comprise the "japonica" varieties, while "indica" and "aus" comprise the "indica" varieties. Rice has been cultivated since ancient times and "oryza" is a classical Latin word for rice. "Sativa" means "cultivated". Debates on the origins of the domesticated rice are numerous. In 2011, genetic evidence showed that all forms of Asian rice, both "indica" and "japonica",
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.