Oryza glaberrima conditions, filling, and has a distinct nutty flavour. It is also grown for cultural reasons; for instance, it is sacred to awasena followers among the Jola people, and is a heritage variety in the United States. Crossbreeding between African and Asian rice is difficult, but there exist some crosses. Humans have independently domesticated two different rice species. African rice was domesticated from wild African rice, "Oryza barthii", while Asian rice ("Oryza sativa"), was domesticated from wild Asian rice, "Oryza rufipogon". "Oryza barthii" still grows wild in Africa, in a wide variety of open habitats. The Sahara was formerly wetter, with
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.