Molecular digitization of 689 vascular plant species from the Ruili Botanical Garden (Giga Science)

Recent advances in genome sequencing have increased our understanding of plant evolution and provided insights into factors affecting agriculturally important traits (e.g., yield, stress tolerance). There is an impetus to increase the quantity and quality of genomes publically available with around 350 of the 391,000 vascular plant species having received sequencing. Here, Liu et al. produce genomic data for 689 vascular plant species from Ruili Botanical Garden in China. Based on 78 highly conserved chloroplast genes, they reconstruct the phylogeny of vascular plants. Potential uses of their genomic dataset include advancing species identification, genome evolution and genome assembly. The project’s scale paves the way for global scale genome schemes such as the 10,000 Plant Genomes Project and the Earth BioGenome Project (Summary by Alex Bowles) Giga Science 10.1093/gigascience/giz007