Genome Sequence Resource of Phytophthora colocasiae from China Using Nanopore Sequencing Technology

Abstract

Phytophthora colocasiae is a destructive oomycete pathogen of taro (Colocasia esculenta), which causes taro leaf blight. To date, only one highly fragmented Illumina short-read-based genome assembly is available for this species. To address this problem, we sequenced strain Lyd2019 from China using Oxford Nanopore Technologies long-read sequencing and Illumina short-read sequencing. We generated a 92.51-Mb genome assembly consisting of 105 contigs with an N50 of 1.70 Mb and a maximum length of 4.17 Mb. In the genome assembly, we identified 52.78% repeats and 18,322 protein-coding genes, of which 12,782 genes were annotated. We also identified 191 candidate RXLR effectors and 1 candidate crinkling and necrosis effector. The updated near-chromosome genome assembly and annotation resources will provide a better understanding of the infection mechanisms of P. colocasiae.