Oryza glaberrima varieties. Scientists from the Africa Rice Center managed to cross-breed African rice with Asian rice varieties to produce a group of interspecific cultivars called New Rice for Africa (NERICA). Carolina Gold is an heirloom cultivar grown in the early United States, sometimes known as golden-seed rice for the colour of its grains. Long-grain gold-seed rice boasted grains 5/12ths of an inch long (up from 3/8ths of an inch), and was brought to market by planter Joshua John Ward in the 1840s. Despite its popularity, the variety was lost in the American Civil War. Charleston Gold was released in 2011 and
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.