Diploid Avena Genomics Resources and their Application

An Avena A-genome zipper is being constructed based on sequencing of accessions of the diploid species Avena atlantica and Avena strigosa, and a recombinant inbred interspecific population. A. atlantica has been sequenced to over 40x coverage of the genome, and the assembled contigs have an N50 of nearly 12kb. Over 1.5 Gb of A. atlantica contigs have been mapped with high confidence to bins with an average size of 1% of the total genetic map length. Annotation and comparative analysis of gene content and organisation is underway. Lower coverage sequencing of additional species has also been carried out, providing references for other component genomes of cultivated oat (ADC-genome hexaploid). These species include A. ventricosa (C-genome diploid) and A. insularis (DC-genome tetraploid). Application of these reference sequences to hexaploid mapping and marker development will be described.