Amaranthus hypochondriacus Genome sequencing. Amaranthus hypochondriacus

In the age of genomics-based crop improvement, a high-quality genome of a local landrace adapted to the local environmental condition is critically important. Grain amaranths produce highly nutritional grains with a multitude of desirable properties including C4 photosynthesis sought in other crops. For improving agronomic traits of grain amaranth and for translating the desirable traits from a landrace to other important dicot crops, a reference genome of a local landrace is necessary. Towards this end, our lab had initiated sequencing the genome of Amaranthus (A.) hypochondriacus (A.hyp_K_white) and had reported a draft genome in 2014. We selected this landrace because it is adapted for cultivation in India for the last few centuries and is currently a candidate for TILLING-based crop improvement. Here, we report a chromosome level denovo assembly (AhKP) of A.hyp_K_white using low-coverage PacBio reads, contigs from the reported draft genome of A.hyp_K_white, and raw HiC data from Plainsman. The placement of AhKP on the phylogenetic tree of grain amaranths of known accessions clearly suggests that AhKP is genetically distal from plainsman and is most closely related to the accession PI619259 from Nepal (ramdana).