Nematode Genome Announcement: Draft Genome of Meloidogyne chitwoodi, an Economically Important Pest of Potato in the Pacific Northwest

Meloidogyne chitwoodi is one of the most devastating pests of potato in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW). Nematode-infected tubers develop external as well as internal defects, making the potato tubers unmarketable, and resulting in economic losses. Draft genome assemblies of three M. chitwoodi genotypes-race 1, race 2 and race 1 pathotype Roza-were generated using Illumina and PacBio Sequel RS II sequencing. The final assemblies consist of 30, 39, and 38 polished contigs for race 1, race 2 and race 1 pathotype Roza, respectively, with average N-50 of 2.37 Mb and average assembled genome size of approximately 47.41 Mb. On average, 10,508 genes were annotated for each genome. Benchmarking universal single-copy ortholog (BUSCO) analysis indicated that 69.80% of the BUSCOs were complete whereas 68.80, 0.93, and 12.67% were single copy, duplicated, and fragmented, respectively. These highly contiguous genomes will enrich resources to study potato-nematode interactions and enhance breeding efforts to develop nematode-resistant potato varieties for the PNW.