Tripidium ravennae Transcriptome assembly

The Poaceae subtribe Saccharinae is diverse spanning numerous genera including Erianthus, Miscanthus, Saccharum, and Tripidium. Some tripidium species have demonstrated particular value as emerging biomass and bioenergy crops in various production systems. New advanced hybrids between T. arundinaceum and T. ravennae are under evaluation in Western North Carolina and are demonstrating high yields and overwintering survival in USDA Zone 6b. These crops may serve as an alternative to other temperate adapted perennial grass species in dedicated biomass and bioenergy feedstock systems. Having foundational genomic and translational sequence information for these novel grasses could enable innovative approaches and modern breeding applications for tripidium and related genera. However, genomic sequence assembly of heterozygous and/or polyploid species remains a challenge. T. ravennae is a diploid species (2n = 2x = 20; 1Cx = 1.015pg approx. 1Gb) of tripidium, that shares a common genetic base of ten chromosomes with Saccharum and Sorghum. The availability of a reference genome and accompanying floral development transcriptome for T. ravennae provides an opportunity for variant calling, sequencing read alignment, comparative genomics, functional analyses, and genome editing applications.