Manihot esculenta Crantz

Information about Cassava Genome

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz.) is a woody shrub native to South America of the spurge family. It is the third-largest source of food carbohydrates in the tropics, after rice and maize (Samper C et al., 2006) [1, 2]. Cassava is a primary source of income and dietary calories for millions of people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of the most drought-tolerant crops, capable of growing on marginal soils.
The current cassava assembly (v6.1) is a brand new Illumina-based assembly from the same genotype, AM560-2. The scaffolds have been anchored onto chromosomes using a high resolution genetic map. Cassava assembly (v6.1) has the following information:

　　● Assembled genome size : ~582.25 Mb
　　● Number of Chromosomes: 18
　　● Number of Unplaced Scaffolds: 2001
　　● Scaffold N50 (L50) = 10 ( 28.12 Mb )
　　● The assembly is 35.9 % GC
　　● Number of Genes: 33033
　　● Number of transcripts: 41381

Genome Re-sequencing Projects and Variation Identification

Dozens of cassava cultivars have been re-sequenced in recent years:

　　● Rokhsar DS et al., 2016, 58 accessions of cassava and 271 African cassava were resequenced [3].
　　● Daniell H et al., 2008, 59 accessions of cassava were sequenced[4].

References

1. Raven P, Fauquet C, Swaminathan MS, Borlaug N, Samper C: Where next for genome sequencing? Science 2006, 311(5760):468-468. [PMID=16439644]

2. Raven P, Fauquet C, Swaminathan MS, Borlaug N, Samper C: Where next for genome sequencing? Science 2006, 311(5760):468. [PMID=16439644]

3. Bredeson JV, Lyons JB, Prochnik SE, Wu GA, Ha CM, Edsinger-Gonzales E, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Rabbi IY, Egesi C, Nauluvula P, Lebot V, Ndunguru J, Mkamilo G, Bart RS, Setter TL, Gleadow RM, Kulakow P, Ferguson ME, Rounsley S, Rokhsar DS: Sequencing wild and cultivated cassava and related species reveals extensive interspecific hybridization and genetic diversity. Nature biotechnology 2016, 34(5):562-570. [PMID=27088722]

4. Daniell H, Wurdack KJ, Kanagaraj A, Lee SB, Saski C, Jansen RK: The complete nucleotide sequence of the cassava (Manihot esculenta) chloroplast genome and the evolution of atpF in Malpighiales: RNA editing and multiple losses of a group II intron. Theor Appl Genet 2008, 116(5):723-737. [PMID=18214421]