Chromosome-scale assembly of the wild wheat relative Aegilops umbellulata

Wild wheat relatives have been explored in plant breeding to increase the
genetic diversity of bread wheat, one of the most important food crops.
Aegilops umbellulata is a diploid U genome-containing grass species that
serves as a genetic reservoir for wheat improvement. In this study, we
report the construction of a chromosome-scale reference assembly of Ae.
umbellulata accession TA1851 based on corrected PacBio HiFi reads and
chromosome conformation capture. The total assembly size was 4.25 Gb with
a contig N50 of 17.7 Mb. In total, 36,268 gene models were predicted. We
benchmarked the performance of hifiasm and LJA, two of the most widely
used assemblers using standard and corrected HiFi reads, revealing a
positive effect of corrected input reads. Comparative genome analysis
confirmed substantial chromosome rearrangements in Ae. umbellulata
compared to bread wheat. In summary, the Ae. umbellulata assembly provides
a resource for comparative genomics in Triticeae and for the discovery of
agriculturally important genes.