A telomere-to-telomere gap-free assembly of soybean genome

Soybean (Glycine max), one of the world’s most important crops, represents an indispensable source of edible oil and protein for both humans and livestock. The first soybean reference genome of the Williams 82 cultivar (Wm82) was assembled using a whole-genome shotgun approach integrated with physical and high-density genetic maps in 2010 (Schmutz et al., 2010). In addition to the first reference genome, de novo genome assemblies have been released recently for dozens of cultivated soybean accessions with the application of long-read sequencing technology (Li et al., 2014; Shen et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2020).