A highly contiguous genome assembly of Brassica nigra (BB) and revised nomenclature for the pseudochromosomes

Abstract Brassica nigra (BB), also called black mustard, is grown as a condiment crop in India. B. nigra represents the B genome of U’s triangle and is one of the progenitor species of B. juncea (AABB), an important oilseed crop of the Indian subcontinent. We report here a highly contiguous genome assembly of B. nigra variety Sangam. The genome assembly has been carried out using Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing and optical mapping. The resulting chromosome-scale assembly is a significant improvement over the previous draft assemblies of B. nigra ; five out of the eight pseudochromosomes were represented by one scaffold each. The assembled genome was annotated for the transposons, centromeric repeats, and genes. The B. nigra genome was compared with the recently available contiguous genome assemblies of B. rapa (AA), B. oleracea (CC), and B. juncea (AABB). Based on the maximum homology among the three diploid genomes of U’s triangle, we propose a new nomenclature for B. nigra pseudochromosomes, taking the B. rapa pseudochromosome nomenclature as the reference.