Ecdeiocolea monostachya Genome sequencing. Ecdeiocolea monostachya

The Australian wild grass Ecdeiocolea monostachya is a critical outgroup to the Poaceae for comparative genomics analyses. We sequenced the genome of E. monostachya to identify signatures of genetic innovations in the grasses. More broadly, E. monostachya provides a robust foundation for researchers in cereal genomics to utilise this species as an outgroup in studies of evolutionary events conserved and unique to the Poaceae. E. monostachya is recalcitrant to growth from seed or after transplant to botanical gardens. Therefore, we have collected tissue from an individual from a single site in Australia. E. monostachya is expected to be diploid with a genome size of 1.5 Gb based on flow cytometry. Assembly was generated using hifiasm using PacBio HiFi reads. The predicted haploid genome was identiifed using purge_dups. For the haploid genome, gene models were predicted using RNAseq derived from sheath, flower, and root tissue.