Chromosome‐level genome assembly of Indian mangrove (Ceriops tagal) revealed a genome‐wide duplication event predating the divergence of Rhizophoraceae mangrove species

Abstract Mangrove ecosystems are unique, highly diverse, provide benefits to humans, and aid in coastal protection. The Indian mangrove, or spurred mangrove, [Ceriops tagal (Perr.) C. B. Rob.] is a member of the Rhizophoraceae family and is commonly found along the intertidal zones in tropical regions in Southeast Asia, southern Asia, and Africa. Here, we present the first high‐quality reference genome assembly of the Ceriops species. A preliminary draft assembly, generated from the 10× Genomics linked‐read library, was scaffolded using the proximity ligation chromatin contact mapping technique (Hi‐C) to obtain a chromosome‐scale assembly of 231,919,005 bases with an N50 length of 11,408,429 bases. The benchmarking universal single‐copy orthologs (BUSCO) analysis revealed that C. tagal gene predictions recovered 95.8% of the highly conserved orthologs. Phylogenetic analyses suggested that C. tagal diverged from the last common ancestor of flat‐leaf spurred mangrove [C. decandra (Griff.) Ding Hou] and C. zippeliana Blume ∼10.4 million yr ago (MYA), and the last common ancestor of genera Ceriops, Kandelia, and Rhizophora diverged from that of genus Bruguiera ∼49.4 MYA. In addition, our analysis of the transversion rate at fourfold‐degenerate sites from orthologous gene pairs provided evidence supporting a recent whole‐genome duplication in C. tagal. The STRUCTURE and principal component analyses illustrated that C. tagal individuals investigated in this study were the admixture of two subpopulations, the genetic background of which was influenced primarily by location. The availability of genomic and transcriptomic resources and biodiversity data reported in this work will be useful for future studies that may shed light on adaptive evolutions of mangrove species.