Chromosome-level genome assembly of Solanum carolinense

As a noxious weed widely distributed across North America and having invaded numerous regions, Solanum carolinense possesses strong environmental adaptability, complex defense strategies, and unique reproductive characteristics, making it a model system for studying plant-herbivore coevolution. However, the lack of high-quality genomic resources for this species has limited in-depth analysis of its adaptive evolutionary mechanisms. In this study, we successfully constructed a chromosome-level reference genome assembly for Solanum carolinense by integrating PacBio HiFi long-read sequencing, Illumina second-generation sequencing, Nanopore sequencing, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), and Hi-C chromosome mapping. The genome assembly has a total length of 915.40 Mb, with a contig N50 of 51.06 Mb and a scaffold N50 of 73.17 Mb; 96.05% of the sequences were successfully mapped to 12 pseudo-chromosomes. The genome contains a high proportion of repetitive sequences (73.64%) and exhibits a high level of heterozygosity (1.13%), characterizing it as a typical highly repetitive and highly heterozygous genome. According to BUSCO evaluation, the genome completeness reaches 94.7%, with 32,206 protein-coding genes annotated, 97.95% of which have functional annotations. The completion of this reference genome enriches research on the adaptive evolution of Solanaceae weeds, provides valuable genomic resources for developing effective control strategies againstSolanum carolinense, and serves as a technical reference for the genome assembly of other highly heterozygous weeds.