A telomere-to-telomere genome assembly resource of Bipolaris sorokiniana, the fungal pathogen causing spot blotch and common root rot diseases in barley and wheat

Bipolaris sorokiniana (=Cochliobolus sativus) is a fungal pathogen that causes spot blotch, common root rot, and kernel blight in barley and wheat. Four pathotypes (0, 1, 2, 7) of the fungus were previously identified based on their virulence on three barley differential lines (Bowman, ND 5883 and NDB 112). Although several genome assemblies have been reported for B. sorokiniana, a telomere-to-telomere genome assembly is still lacking for this fungus. In this study, we assembled the genome of a pathotype 0 isolate (ND93-1) of B. sorokiniana using both PacBio HiFi reads and ultralong Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) reads corrected with Illumina paired-end 100 bp short reads. The combined genome assembly of ND93-1 has an estimated size of 35.7 Mb and consists of 16 scaffolds each having two telomeres. A total of 11,564 protein-coding genes were predicted, including 1,633 genes encoding for secretory proteins and 473 genes for effectors. This telomere-to-telomere genome assembly provides an important resource for comparative genomics and understanding molecular biology of B. sorokiniana and related Bipolaris species.

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