Hard fescue (Festuca brevipila) reference transcriptome generated by PabBio Isoform sequencing

Abstract

Hard fescue (Festuca brevipila Tracey, 2n=6x=42) is a cool-season turfgrass with a fine leaf texture that performs well under low-input management. Breeding and genetics studies of F. brevipila have been limited due to the complexity of its hexaploid genome. To advance our knowledge of F. brevipila genomics, we used PacBio isoform sequencing to develop a reference transcriptome of this taxon. Here, we report a reference transcriptome generated from root, crown, leaf, and seed head tissues. We obtained 59,510 full-length transcripts of which 38,595 were non-redundant full-length transcripts, with a N50 of 2,585 bp. The longest and shortest transcripts were 11,487 and 58 bp, respectively. By using the long-read transcriptome assembly to improve the reference de novo short reads assembly we investigated the phylogenetic relationship between selected taxa that were closely related to F. brevipila. Overall, the F. brevipila Pacbio reference transcriptome improved the completeness of the short reads assembly and provided the foundation for genomics studies of this important turfgrass species.