Oryza glaberrima mature more quickly, and may be sown directly on higher ground, eliminating the need to transplant seedlings. Most is rain-watered, and the soil is often not cultivated. African rice has profuse vegetative growth, which smothers weeds. It exhibits better resistance to various rice pests and diseases, such as blast disease, African rice gall midge ("Orseolia oryzivora"), parasitic nematodes ("Heterodera sacchari" and "Meloidogyne" spp.), rice stripe necrosis virus, rice yellow mottle virus, and the parasitic plant "Striga". Most African rices shatter more than Asian rices, possibly because they have not been domesticated for as long. A few varieties of African rice
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.