Hexaploid Oat genome PacBio Reads

Oat is a grain crop that is high in fiber and used in a number of foods that carry an FDA label listing oats as being capable of "reducing the risk of heart disease". Although oat has this important health benefit, the understanding of how oat fiber develops is lacking. Genomic resources for oats have significantly lagged behind that for other grains. The fact that oat has a very large and complex polyploid genome compared to other crop plants has contributed to the challenges in identifying the gene networks that control fiber development and other economically important processes and pathways in oats. The goal of this project is to generate a draft genome sequence of cultivated oats by sequencing related wild oat genomes that are smaller in size to that of cultivated oats to assist in sequence assembly and annotation.