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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Madison, Wisconsin » U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center » Cell Wall Biology and Utilization Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #401719
Research Project: Improving Utilization of Forages in Integrated Dairy Production Systems to Enhance Sustainable Farming Systems and Food Security

Location: Cell Wall Biology and Utilization Research

Title: A reference assembly for the legume cover crop hairy vetch (Vicia villosa)

Author
item Fuller, Tyson
item Bickhart, Derek
item Koch, Lisa
item Kissing Kucek, Lisa
item ALI, SHAHJAHAN - Oak Ridge Institute For Science And Education (ORISE)
item MANGELSON, HALEY - Phase Genomics, Inc
item MONTEROS, MARIA - Noble Research Institute
item HERNANDEZ, TIMOTHY - Noble Research Institute
item Smith, Timothy - Tim
item Riday, Heathcliffe
item Sullivan, Michael

Submitted to: GigaByte
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/3/2023
Publication Date: 11/13/2023
Citation: Fuller, T.D., Bickhart, D.M., Koch, L.M., Kucek, L.K., Ali, S., Mangelson, H., Monteros, M.J., Hernandez, T., Smith, T.P., Riday, H., Sullivan, M.L. 2023. A reference assembly for the legume cover crop hairy vetch (Vicia villosa). GigaByte. https://doi.org/10.46471/gigabyte.98.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46471/gigabyte.98

Interpretive Summary: Hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) is a legume species that is used as a cover crop. When grown in farm fields over the winter, hairy vetch can reduce soil erosion, help bees, feed livestock, and supply nitrogen to crops like corn and tomatoes. Some traits in hairy vetch limit its use as a cover crop, such as pod shatter and hard seed. To help plant breeders overcome those challenges, we put together a resource with all of the genetic material from an example hairy vetch plant, known as a genome. Vetch is highly heterozygous, meaning that there are lots of differences between its two copies of genetic information. To read the heterozygous genome, we had to use creative and new technologies, such as low-error rate long-read sequencing and manual and automated curation. Our work is only the second high-quality reference genome for the Vicia genus. The new reference genome is expected to be a useful resource for work in discovering genes and gene function and developing better varieties of vetch for cover crop use.

Technical Abstract: Vicia villosa (hairy vetch) is an incompletely domesticated annual legume of the Fabaceae family native to Europe and Western Asia. V. villosa is widely used as a cover crop in the United States Midwest due to an ability to withstand harsh winters. A reference-quality genome assembly (Vvill1.0) was prepared from low error rate long sequence reads to improve genetic-based trait selection of this species. The Vvill1.0 assembly includes seven scaffolds corresponding to the seven estimated linkage groups and comprising approximately 68% of the total genome size of 2.03 gigabase pairs. This assembly is expected to be a useful resource for genetic improvement of this emerging cover crop species as well as to provide useful insights into plant genome evolution.