Setaria viridis cultivar:ME034v Genome sequencing and assembly

Grasses of the genus Setaria represent diverse species with phenotypes ranging from food crops (S. italica) to weeds (S. viridis). Their rapid life cycle and small size position Setaria as an excellent model for the study of C4 photosynthesis, and close phylogenetic relationships with food crops such as maize and sorghum offer a potential chassis to accelerate the development of beneficial traits. Tools for genetic characterization and manipulation have been progressively advancing (reviewed in (Zhu et al. 2017), and include a reference genome for S. italica (Zhang et al. 2012; Bennetzen et al. 2012) and resources for transformation (reviewed in (Van Eck 2018). The S. viridis cultivar 'ME034', first described in (Layton and Kellogg, 2014), represents a highly transformable line that is ideally suited for studies involving genetic modification.