Abstract
Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) is one of the most important forage grasses of temperate regions. It is characterized by a high level of within cultivar diversity, making the fixation of traits in breeding programs difficult. The aim of this study was to develop a functional resource for L. multiflorum that will greatly assist the development of genomics-assisted breeding strategies. The genome of a diploid, heterozygous genotype was sequenced and assembled into 130k scaffolds with a total assembly size of 586 Mb. 61k gene models were annotated and 80.5% of BUSCOs were complete, indicating a good representation of the gene content. Simple sequence repeat (SSR) mining identified 29,840 SSR loci for L. multiflorum, with 4,601 being shared with Lolium perenne L. Proteome comparison with other Poaceae revealed several protein clusters including the SAUR-like auxin-responsive protein family, glutathione S-transferases, BTB-POZ and the photosystem II light harvesting complex gene B1B2 to be enriched in Lolium spp., while 86 clusters were more and 293 less abundant in L. multiflorum than in L. perenne. Here we present the first sequence, assembly and annotation of the gene-space of L. multiflorum, providing a valuable resource for marker identification for breeding programs, genome-wide association studies or evolutionary studies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Grassland Science |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 125-134 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| ISSN | 1744-6961 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2019 |
Keywords
- gene space
- Lolium multiflorum
- ryegrasses