Today, we share the chromosome-length genome assemblies for two petunia species, the white Petunia axillaris and the red Petunia exserta. These were done in collaboration with Michel Moser and Cris Kuhlemeier at the University of Bern. The P. axillaris assembly is based on a previously published draft from (Bombarely, Moser et al. 2016), and the P. exserta is generated using hitherto unpublished data.
Petunia is genus of 20 species of flowering plants of South American origin. P. axillaris is one of the two species that were used to create the world's most popular bedding plant, the petunia hybrid Petunia x hybrida [1]. P. exserta was only discovered in the Serras de Sudeste of Brazil in 1987 and is already considered to be near extinction in the wild [2].
Learn more about petunias and petunia genetics from (Bombarely, Moser et al. 2016)!