Long-range sequencing of genomic DNA from rice-infecting Magnaporthe oryzae isolates from Italy

Magnaporthe oryzae (Syn. Pyricularia oryzae) is a notorious fungus known for causing blast disease on rice and wheat with devastating effect on grain yield. M. oryzae host range includes several other cereal crops such as oat, finger millet and foxtail millet as well as wild grasses. M. oryzae is found all over the world wherever warm temperature and high humidity are common. Italy is the largest rice producing country in Europe and M. oryzae is thought to be co-evolving with rice in Italy since its introduction in the 15th century. We obtained N50 read lengths ranging from 23,035 to 32,000 bp and total base counts of ~4.3 to 7.5 Gbp (~100x to 180x coverage). The sequence reads were assembled using Canu software (v1.8). The number of contigs varied from 17 to 38 with the largest contigs in the ~10-11 Mbp range.