Chromosome-level genome assemblies and annotations of Amaranthus spinosus, Amaranthus acanthochiton, Amaranthus arenicola, and Amaranthus floridanus

Abstract

Amaranthus L. spans aggressive agricultural weeds, ornamentals, and ancient pseudocereals. Species within the genus vary in morphology, environmental tolerance, and sexual systems, making them well-suited for studying reproductive evolution and plant adaptation. To investigate sex chromosome architecture within the genus, we generated chromosome-level assemblies of a monoecious amaranth (Amaranthus spinosus) and three dioecious species (A. acanthochiton, A. arenicola, and A. floridanus) using PacBio high-fidelity (HiFi) long reads. We paired these data with Dovetail Genomics Omni-C sequencing to achieve haplotype resolution for A. spinosus and A. acanthochiton, and we used reference-guided scaffolding for the remaining two species. The assemblies are highly contiguous, with sizes ranging from 394.24 to 607.10 Mbp, contig N50 from 0.63 to 8.76 Mbp, and scaffold N50 from 22.44 to 37.97 Mbp. Evaluation of the assemblies and annotations revealed 96.3 to 97.6%, and 97.6 to 98.3% BUSCO completeness, respectively. Comparative genomic analysis revealed that the Chromosome 1 inversions and Robertsonian fusion previously reported in A. tuberculatus are conserved in A. acanthochiton and consistent with the architecture of A. arenicola and A. floridanus, suggesting that the evolution of dioecy in this clade predates subsequent speciation. In parallel, multiple homologs of Rf1 on Chromosome 3 of A. spinosus, a monoecious species that exhibits spatial separation of male and female flowers and is closely related to the dioecious A. palmeri, were identified. Together, this study provides foundational resources for advancing evolutionary, ecological, and agronomic research across the genus, including herbicide resistance evolution and weediness traits.