Avena sativa OT3098 Assembly and Gene Annotation

About Genus species

Cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.) is an allohexaploid (AACCDD, 2n = 6x = 42) thought to have been domesticated more than 3,000 years ago while growing as a weed in wheat, emmer and barley fields in Anatolia. Oat has a low carbon footprint, substantial health benefits and the potential to replace animal-based food products. Oat is a member of Poaceae, an economically important grass family that includes wheat, rice, barley, common millet, maize, sorghum and sugarcane. Avena species exist in nature as diploids, tetraploids and hexaploids and exhibit the greatest genetic diversity around the Mediterranean, Middle East, Canary Islands and Himalayas. Currently, oat is a global crop with production ranking seventh among cereals (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/, accessed May 2021). Compared with that of other cereals, oat cultivation requires fewer treatments with insecticides, fungicides or fertilizers. Whole-grain oats are a healthy source of antioxidants, polyunsaturated fatty acids, proteins and dietary fibre such as β-glucan, which is important in post-meal glycaemic responses and for preventing cardiovascular disease. Cereals such as wheat, barley and rye store high amounts of gluten proteins in their grain; by contrast, oat and rice store globular proteins in their grain.

Assembly

The ot3098 oat assembly was sequenced by Pepsico and Corteva Agriscience. This was the first-ever sequencing of the full oat genome for use in open-source applications.

Annotation

68,571 gene were annotated and loaded into Ensembl Plants

References

*Avena sativa – OT3098 v2, PepsiCo

• https://graingenes.org/GG3/sites/default/files/hot_topics_files/PepsiCo_OT3098_v2_genome_release_April_2021.pdf

• Kamal, N., Tsardakas Renhuldt, N., Bentzer, J. et al. The mosaic oat genome gives insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop. Nature 606, 113–119 (2022)

• Avni, R., Kamal, N., Bitz, L. et al. A pangenome and pantranscriptome of hexaploid oat. Nature 649, 131–139 (2026)

Picture credit (Creative Commons BY-SA 2.5): Georg Gerl, Helmholz Munich, 2024

More information

General information about this species can be found in Wikipedia.