Phyllachora maydis genome assembly and annotation

Phyllachora maydis is a fungal pathogen that causes tar spot disease on corn. Having been recently introduced to the United States, it has become one of the top corn diseases of agricultural economic importance. This fungus has been understudied due to difficulties working with the pathogen in the lab, and molecular characterization is lacking. We generated an improved genome assembly and annotation with the use of long read sequencing and RNA sequencing data. This serves as the starting point of further molecular research that can be performed on this pathogen.