Africa Rice Center with IRRI and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), which sets a global strategic research agenda for rice. One of the major tasks of AfricaRice is the development and introduction of new rice seed varieties that are suitable for African conditions. NERICA, which stands for "New Rice for Africa", is two families of interspecific cultivars of African ("Oryza glaberrima") and Asian ("Oryza sativa") rice species, that was developed to improve the yields of African farmers. For his work on NERICA, Dr Monty Jones from Sierra Leone was awarded the World Food Prize in 2004
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.