The complete chloroplast genome sequence of a warm season ornamental grass, Cenchrus alopecuroides Thunb. 1794 (Poaceae)

Abstract

Cenchrus alopecuroides Thunb. 1794 is a warm-season ornamental grass with glossy foliage and showy inflorescence, which is widely distributed from eastern Asia to Australia. Although this species is of great economic importance, little genomic sequence data are available. Here, we report the complete chloroplast genome sequence of C. alopecuroides, which provides valuable plastid genomic resources for further studies on this ornamental grass. The chloroplast genome of C. alopecuroides was 138,053 bp in length and exhibited a typical quadripartite structure, which comprised a pair of inverted repeat regions (22,331 bp) separated by a large (81,177 bp) and a small single copy (12,214 bp) region. In total, 110 unique genes were annotated in the chloroplast genome, containing 76 protein-coding genes, 30 transfer RNAs and four ribosomal RNAs. The overall GC content of the chloroplast genome was 38.6%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 11 whole-chloroplast genome sequences of Cenchrus species suggested that C. alopecuroides and C. compressus were sisters to each other and joint sisters to C. clandestinus.

Keywords:

• Cenchrus alopecuroides
• chloroplast genome
• phylogenetic analysis

Ethical approval

We confirm that all the research meets ethical guidelines and adheres to the legal requirements of the Xinyang Agricultural and Forestry University (China).

Author contributions

ZW and PL designed the project. LY, JY and YT collected samples and analyzed data. ZW and PL wrote the manuscript. JY and PL revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript. All the authors meet the criteria for authorship as per the ICMJE criteria.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The study was permitted under permission from Xinyang Agricultural and Forestry University.

Data availability statement

The genome sequence data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov under the accession no. ON206984. The associated BioProject, SRA, and Bio-Sample numbers are PRJNA871033, SRR21166642, and SAMN30399920, respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [32002083], the Foundation of Central Laboratory of Xinyang Agriculture and Forestry University [FCL202002], the Horticultural Plant Biology Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center of Xinyang Agriculture and Forestry University [202102] and the Program for Innovative Research Team in Xinyang Agriculture and Forestry University [XNKJTD-012].