02/06/2026
๐พ First Chromosome-Scale Genome Assemblies of Tunisian Durum Wheat Landraces Chili & Mahmoudi - Assemblies & Data Now Public
We are thrilled to announce that the first -scale genome assemblies for the Tunisian durum wheat landraces and are now complete and publicly available!
These historically significant landraces, prized for high protein content (Chili, up to 17.3%) and drought/heat tolerance (Mahmoudi), now have reference-quality genomic resources, opening the door to marker-assisted breeding, comparative genomics, and pan-genome studies in North African germplasm.
๐ฌ Key Findings:
โข Chromosome-scale assemblies with scaffold N50s of 845 Mbp (Chili) and 2,072 Mbp (Mahmoudi)
โข Six independent validation layers confirming QV ~68 and BUSCO completeness >99%
โข Independent wfmash validation: 98.6% mean alignment identity across 11,172 chromosome-to-reference alignments
โข Comprehensive structural characterization: GC profiling, 24 rDNA loci, 9,456 structural variants, subgenome comparison (A vs B), and per-chromosome quality scoring
โข Discovery of a putative 2Bโ3B homeologous fusion in Mahmoudi (4,710 Mbp Chr3B), a structural novelty in this ancient landrace
โข Chromosome assignment achieved using k-mer sketching on consumer hardware (15 GB RAM), democratizing polyploid genome assembly
๐ป PUBLIC DATA:
All assemblies, pseudomolecules, and supplementary datasets are openly deposited and freely accessible.
๐ First chromosome-scale genome assemblies and comprehensive structural characterization of Tunisian durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) landraces Chili and Mahmoudi
๐ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.25.727644v2
๐พ Zenodo โ Assemblies & Data:
๐ https://zenodo.org/records/20366290
๐ Unlocking Open-Access Genomic and Transcriptomic Data: The First Bioinformatic Exploitation of Tunisian Durum Wheat Landraces Chili and Mahmoudi
๐ https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723814v2
This work builds on generated by the OpenDurumGPT consortium. Thank you for making this resource open to the community.