Chromosome-level genome assembly of banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa L.).

Lagerstroemia speciosa is a famous medicinal and ornamental plant of the Lagerstroemia genus, with large and gorgeous flowers and a flowering period of 3 to 5 months. L. speciosa extracts have been used for many years in folk medicine to treat diabetes. Here, we used PacBio and Hi-C sequencing technologies to obtain a high-quality whole genome map of L. speciosa at chromosome level. The assembled genome is 306.76 Mb, with a scaffold N50 of 13.03 Mb. 98.75% of contigs were anchored to 24 pseudochromosomes, and 38.58% of the contigs (118.11 Mb) were identified as repeats. 93.54% of the 29,351 protein-coding genes were annotated. In addition, 146 miRNAs, 511 tRNAs, 2,733 rRNAs and 679 snRNAs were annotated. This high-quality genome assembly provides a valuable resource for understanding the species evolution in the Lythraceae family and promoting the study of important traits of L. speciosa.