High-quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies: comparisons of three Diaphorina citri (Asian citrus psyllid) geographic populations

The Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri, is the insect vector of the causal agent of huanglongbing (HLB), a devastating bacterial disease of commercial citrus. Presently, few genomic resources exist for D. citri. In this study, we utilized PacBio HiFi and chromatin confirmation contact (Hi-C) sequencing to sequence, assemble, and compare three high-quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies of D. citri collected from California, Taiwan, and Uruguay. Our assemblies had final sizes of 282.67 Mb (California), 282.89 Mb (Taiwan), and 266.67 Mb (Uruguay) assembled into 13 pseudomolecules—a reduction in assembly size of 41–45% compared with previous assemblies which we validated using flow cytometry. We identified the X chromosome in D. citri and annotated each assembly for repetitive elements, protein-coding genes, transfer RNAs, ribosomal RNAs, piwi-interacting RNA clusters, and endogenous viral elements. Between 19,083 and 20,357 protein-coding genes were predicted. Repetitive DNA accounts for 36.87–38.26% of each assembly. Comparative analyses and mitochondrial haplotype networks suggest that Taiwan and Uruguay D. citri are more closely related, while California D. citri are closely related to Florida D. citri. These high-quality, chromosome-scale assemblies provide new genomic resources to researchers to further D. citri and HLB research.