2018 ASHS Annual Conference

The wild, diploid (2n=2x=24) potato species Solanum bulbocastanum harbors disease and pest resistance genes that have been successfully introgressed into tetraploid potato breeding clones. We are developing genome resources for this species in order to study the genetic basis of resistance to Columbia Root Knot Nematode. We improved our Illumina-based draft genome assembly for S. bulbocastanum accession SB22 using long read sequencing. Sequencing libraries of 20 kb and 35 kb were run on a total of 44 SMRT cells on a Pacific Biosciences Sequel instrument. The resulting 39 Gb of sequence data were assembled into 1,301 contigs totaling 600 Mb. Chromosome confirmation capture performed by Dovetail Genomics was used to order the assembled genome contigs on twelve pseudochromosomes. A total of 32,943 protein-coding genes were predicted in the genome. This genome sequence is a resource for the study of disease resistance mechanisms in potato, and for development of molecular markers for marker-assisted selection in potato breeding programs.