Genome Resource Announcement for Emerging Pathogen <i>Bipolaris gigantea</i> , Isolated from <i>Microstegium vimineum</i>

Bipolaris gigantea is a pathogen of the invasive grass Microstegium vimineum and is an emerging pathogen of other hosts such as hemp and barley, causing characteristic eyespot foliar lesions. The fungus is characterized by long pale hyaline conidia measuring approximately 300 to 350 μm. Previously, this pathogen was classified in the Drechslera genus; it was recently reassigned as Bipolaris based on molecular identification. Here, we generated a high-quality draft genome sequence of B. gigantea isolate BGF using long- and short-read DNA sequencing. The assembled genome, 30.23 Mb in size with a Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) completeness score of 98.4%, exhibited synteny with the common grass pathogen B. sorokiniana isolate 10943. Average nucleotide identity (ANI) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analyses revealed high sequence identity with B. gigantea isolates from Cannabis sativa fields in Kentucky. This research provides a genomic resource that will contribute to future studies to understand the host range evolution and pathogenicity of this novel pathogen. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .