The first long-read nuclear genome assembly of Oryza australiensis, a wild rice from northern Australia

Oryza australiensis is a wild rice native to monsoonal northern Australia. The International Oryza Map Alignment Project emphasises its significance as the sole representative of the EE genome Glade. Assembly of the O. australiensis genome has previously been challenging due to its high Long Terminal Repeat (LTR) retrotransposon (RT) content. Oxford Nanopore long reads were combined with Illumina short reads to generate a high-quality similar to 858 M bp genome assembly within 850 contigs with 46x long read coverage. Reference-guided scaffolding increased genome contiguity, placing 88.2% of contigs into 12 pseudomolecules. After alignment to the Oryza sativa cv. Nipponbare genome, we observed several structural variations. PacBio Iso-Seq data were generated for five distinct tissues to improve the functional annotation of 34,587 protein-coding genes and 42,329 transcripts. We also report SNV numbers for three additional O. australiensis genotypes based on Illumina re-sequencing. Although genetic similarity reflected geographical separation, the density of SNVs also correlated with our previous report on variations in salinity tolerance. This genome re-confirms the genetic remoteness of the O. australiensis lineage within the O. officinalis genome complex. Assembly of a high-quality genome for O. australiensis provides an important resource for the discovery of critical genes involved in development and stress tolerance.