A Short-Read Genome Assembly Resource for Leveillula taurica Causing Powdery Mildew Disease of Sweet Pepper (Capsicum annuum)

Powdery mildew of sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum) is an economically important disease. It is caused by Leveillula taurica, an obligate biotrophic ascomycete with a partly endophytic mycelium and haustoria, i.e., feeding structures formed in the mesophyll cells of infected host plant tissues. The molecular basis of its pathogenesis is largely unknown because genomic resources only exist for epiphytically growing powdery mildew fungi with haustoria formed exclusively in epidermal cells of their plant hosts. Here, we present the first reference genome assembly for an isolate of L. taurica isolated from sweet pepper in Hungary. The short read-based assembly consists of 23,599 contigs with a total length of 187.2 Mbp; the scaffold N-50 is 13,899 kbp and N-90 is 3,522 kbp; and the average GC content is 39.2%. We detected at least 92,881 transposable elements covering 55.5 Mbp (30.4%). BRAKER predicted 19,751 protein-coding gene models in this assembly. Our reference genome assembly of L. taurica is the first resource to study the molecular pathogenesis and evolution of a powdery mildew fungus with a partly endophytic lifestyle.