De novo assembly of a near-complete genome of aquatic vegetable Zizania latifolia in the Yangtze River Basin

Abstract The cultivated Zizania latifolia, an aquatic vegetable prevalent in the Yangtze River Basin, represents a unique plant-fungus complex whose domestication is associated with host-parasite co-evolution. In this study, we present a high-quality, chromosome-scale genome assembly of cultivated Z. latifolia. We employed PacBio long-read sequencing and Hi-C technology to generate ~578.42 Mb genome assembly, which contains 47.59% repeat sequences with a contig N50 of ~33.75 Mb. The contigs were successfully clustered into 17 chromosomal-sized scaffolds with a GC content of 43.26%, showing 98.39% completeness in BUSCO analysis. In total, we predicted 39,934 protein-coding genes, 88.79% of which could be functionally annotated. This genome assembly provides a valuable resource for unraveling Z. latifolia’s domestication process, and advances our understanding of the evolutionary history and agricultural potential of Z. latifolia.