Technology-enabled great leap in deciphering plant genomes

Abstract Plant genomes provide essential and vital basic resources to study multifarious aspects of plant biology and applications (e.g. breeding). From 2000 to 2020, 1,031 genomes of 788 plant species were sequenced. From 2021 to 2023, 1,857 genomes of 841 plant species, including 622 newly sequenced species, were assembled, showing a great leap. The 1,857 newly assembled genomes, with some being telomere-to-telomere (T2T) assembles, cover the major phylogenetic clades and many of them have a high quality. The achievement is mainly attributed to significant advances in both sequencing technologies and assembly software. A database named N3: plants, genomes, technologies was developed to accommodate the metadata associated with the sequenced plant genomes. In the end, we discussed the challenges involved in building huge size gap-free and single-cell genomes as well as the future opportunities in plant genomic studies.