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The chloroplast genomes of wild loquat can help to determine their place in the history of evolution. Here, we sequenced and assembled two novel wild loquat's chloroplast genomes, one is Eriobotrya elliptica, and the other is an unidentified wild loquat, which we named "YN-1". Their sizes are 159,471 bp and 159,399 bp, respectively. We also assembled a cultivated loquat named 'JFZ', its chloroplast genome size is 159,156 bp. A comparative study was conducted with six distinct species of loquats, including five wild loquats and one cultivated loquat. The results showed that both E. elliptica and "YN-1" have 127 genes, one gene more than E. fragrans, which is psbK. Regions trnF-GAA-ndhJ, petG-trnP-UGG, and rpl32-trnL-UAG were found to exhibit high variability. It was discovered that there was a positive selection on rpl22 and rps12. RNA editing analysis found several chilling stress-specific RNA editing sites, especially in rpl2 gene. Phylogenetic analysis results showed that "YN-1" is closely related to E. elliptica, E. obovata and E. henryi., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: The process of crop domestication has long been a major area of research to gain insights into the history of human civilization and to understand the process of evolution. Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.) is one of the typical subtropical fruit trees, which was domesticated in China at least 2000 years ago. In the present study, we re-sequenced the genome of nine wild loquat accessions collected from wide geographical range and 10 representative cultivated loquat cultivars by using RAD-tag tacit to exploit the molecular footprints of domestication., Results: We obtained 26.4 Gb clean sequencing data from 19 loquat accessions, with an average of 32.64 M reads per genotype. We identified more than 80,000 SNPs distributed throughout the loquat genome. The SNP density and numbers were slightly higher in the wild loquat populations than that in the cultivated populations. All cultivars were clustered together by structure, phylogenetic and PCA analyses., Conclusion: The modern loquat cultivars have experienced a non-significant genetic bottleneck during domestication, and originated from a single domesticated event. Moreover, our study revealed that Hubei province of China is probably the origin center of cultivated loquat.