Location: Crop Improvement and Protection Research
Project Number: 2038-22000-020-004-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 18, 2021
End Date: Aug 17, 2023
Objective:
We are providing funds to the University of California, Davis to support a project scientist who will be assembling and annotating the genome of the beet leafhopper (Circulifer tenellus), a project completed jointly by ARS in Salinas, and UC Davis. Beet leafhopper is the vector of beet curly top virus (BCTV) and tomato big bud phytoplasma, which are both important pests of tomato in California. The annotated genome of C. tenellus will greatly facilitate completion of transcriptome studies conducted by ARS and UC Davis toward understanding how BCTV influences gene expression in the insect in response to virus infection of host plants. Furthermore, this information will become publicly available for use by the greater scientific community. Cost of annotation is anticipated to be $10,000 with USDA-ARS providing $8,000 of these funds.
Approach:
A project scientist with the University of California Davis will assemble and annotate the recently sequenced genome of the beet leafhopper using established methods and software.
