A Draft Genome Resource for a Cacao Thread Blight Disease–Causing Strain of <i>Paramarasmius palmivorus</i>

Thread blight disease (TBD) is an emerging foliar disease on cacao ( Theobroma cacao), the source of chocolate. Multiple species of pathogenic fungi in the Marasmiinae suborder of Agaricales are responsible for causing TBD in cacao. A recent phylogenetic study showed that Marasmius palmivorus, the second most frequently isolated TBD-causing fungus in Ghana, was phylogenetically distinct from the Marasmiaceae genera Marasmius and Moniliophthora, leading to the naming of a new genus, Paramarasmius. The genus currently contains two species, the type species P. palmivorus and P. mesosporus. This report describes our release of a draft nuclear genome assembly and annotation of P. palmivorus strain GH-12 derived from long- and short-read sequencing. This high-quality draft is the first released genome for P. palmivorus and provides insight into the pathogenicity and evolution of an emerging pathogen. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .