High quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies: Comparisons of three Diaphorina citri (Asian Citrus Psyllid) geographic populations

The Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri, is the insect vector of the causal agent of huanglongbing (HLB), a devastating bacterial disease of commercial citrus. Few genomic resources exist for D. citri. In this study, we utilized PacBio HiFi and chromatin confirmation contact (Hi-C) sequencing to sequence, assemble, and compare three high quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies of D. citri collected from California, Taiwan, and Uruguay. Our assemblies had final sizes of 282.67 Mb (California), 282.89 Mb (Taiwan), and 266.67 Mb (Uruguay) assembled into 13 pseudomolecules – a reduction in assembly size of 41% to 45% compared to previous assemblies which we validated using flow cytometry. We identified the X chromosome in D. citri and found it to use an XX/X0 sex-determination system. Annotation of repetitive elements revealed differing repeat class content between assemblies and showed that the bulk of repeat DNA is found on chromosomes 8 through 13. We annotated between 19,083 and ...