Near telomere-to-telomere genome assembly of Camellia pitardii

Camellia pitardii Cohen-Stuart, is an endemic winter-spring flowering wild Camellia species in southwestern China, with important ecological and horticultural value. Here, we report the near telomere-to-telomere (T2T) genome of C. pitardii by combining PacBio HiFi, ONT ultra-long, Hi-C and Illumina sequencing platforms. The genome size was 2.63 Gb, with repetitive content of 78.91% and contig N50 of 146.18 Mb. 95.5% of genomic sequences were anchored onto 15 chromosomes, including eight gap-free chromosomes, with 25 telomeres and 15 centromeres. A total of 52,848 protein-coding genes were predicted, of which 98.27% were functionally annotated. The genomic quality was further confirmed by the quality value (QV) of 44.87 and the Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) value of 96.34%. Comparative genomic analysis showed that C. pitardii had a close genetic relationship with C. oleifera and C. chekiangoleosa. The availability of C. pitardii near T2T genome will provide a foundation for identifying key genes related to stress resistance, flowering time regulation, and flower color formation, and promotes the breeding, utilization and conservation of the germplasm resources.